The Lord’s Prayer, Eighth Petition: Final Deliverance and Peace

The prayer ends as it began — with the desire for God’s kingdom. Having asked to be spared from falling, we now ask to be delivered from evil altogether. This petition gathers up all that precedes it, for every gift of the Father leads to this: that we may be freed from sin, from the devil, and from the misery that follows both.

By “evil” Augustine understands not an abstraction, but the evil one himself — the devil who seeks to draw the soul away from God. We therefore pray that we may be released from his power, from his snares, and from all that belongs to his kingdom. Deliverance from evil is the full establishment of God’s reign in us.

This is the goal toward which the whole prayer has been moving. We began by calling God our Father, and now we end by seeking to live entirely under His protection. Between these two points lies the whole journey of conversion — from adoption to perfection, from weakness to victory.

Deliverance from evil is not merely escape from outward trouble, but liberation from the inward corruption of sin. When the soul is purified from all disorder and rests wholly in God, it has already begun to taste this deliverance. The final fulfillment will come when death itself is destroyed, and we are made partakers of the eternal kingdom.

Thus the Lord’s Prayer ends where the Beatitudes began: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The circle is complete — humility begins the ascent, perseverance secures it, and deliverance crowns it. To be delivered from evil is to be brought into perfect peace, where God is all in all.

Source: St. Augustine, On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Book II, Chapters 9–11.