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Lead us not into temptation, This is a good prayer, obviously. It is the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. It is a prayer that saves us from the near occasion of sin. It is a prayer that saves us from overconfidence. It is a prayer that saves us from thinking we have power over sin when in fact the opposite is true. Sin has power over us. We can learn a lesson from the story of Noah. A little rain can really lead to a flood. Satan always wants us to think we can play with fire without getting burned. He only needs an inch to take a mile. Jesus knows how dangerous sin really is. He knows how quickly sin gains momentum. Sin avalanches. Once we begin to sin, it is hard to stop. Lying is the perfect example. One lie begets seven others. This applies to all other sins as well. Once we begin to sin, as we all know, it can take years of work, sometimes decades, to stop. To protect us from all of this, Jesus taught us to pray that Our Father would keep us far from temptation. Prevention really is the best medicine.
Yet what if we are already deeply infected with sin? What if we have already reached the point where our sins have more control over us than we have over them? What if the damage is already done? When faced with this reality, we sometimes give in too easily. We can listen to the morality that does not come from the Church but from our culture, a morality that encourages us to lie to ourselves and to pretend that we are not really sick. We might intentionally dull our conciences to that we are not aware of our sins. We go to confession less so that we are able to ignore and forget most of our sins. We pretend that our sins have not deeply separated us from ourselves, from God and from one another. We pretend that we never promised God we would be holy, that on the day of our baptism we promised not to be mastered by sin. We settle for being relatively good compared to somebody else, rather than being absolutely good. We presume upon God's mercy instead of actually becoming more reliant upon it. Worst of all, we pretend to a friend of Jesus without remembering that we are only His friends if we do what He commands us.
If we are already deeply infected with sin, pretending that we are not sick only makes things worse. Ignoring our sins does not make them go away. As much as we try to hide our sins from ourselves and from one another, we know that we cannot hide them from God. Pretending that our sins do not damage our friendship with God only makes that friendship grow even colder. Lent is a time for us to let go of pride and dishonesty. It is a time for courage, humility, honesty and faith.
Our sins do indeed separate us from God. Pretending otherwise gets us nowhere. Yet this is not the end of the story. Just because we made the mistake of playing with sins that have gotten the better of us doesn't mean the story is over. No, we cannot pretend that our sins do not separate us from God. Nor can we pretend that we can heal ourselves of our addiction to sin by our own power. Once infected, we do not have the power to cure ourselves. St. Peter tells us, however, that the chasm between us and God caused by sin has been bridged by the suffering of Jesus Himself. Sin causes the most intense kind of loneliness imaginable, but still there is hope. Jesus' decision to suffer for the unrighteous means that no matter how far sin has separated us from God, Jesus has descended even farther in order that we might never be alone. St. Peter says that Jesus even went to preach to the spirits in prison, a reference to His decision to descend to the depths of hell so that no sinner would be able to say that he is unloved and forgotten by God.
Jesus' decision to suffer and to die for us is not a 'get out of jail' free card. It is not a cheap grace. It is not Jesus' decision to save us even though we give no evidence of wanting to be saved. It is a way forward, however, for one who has been infected by sin. The story of the Lord's temptation in the desert shows that even though we do not have power of sin, He does. Even though Jesus' advice to us is to pray to be led away from temptation, we see that His love never changes even when we ignore this advice. If anything, the Lord seeks us lost sinners all the more, that He might be able to deliver us from evil. Yet we know He will not save us without ourselves. When we pray that the Lord might deliver us from evil, we know that we have a part to play. The way forward for us is a decision on our part to remain closely united to the one who can lead us out of hell. Our part is to stay with the one who has the power over temptation and evil.
Sin at its root is not a choosing to be an evil person. It is a failure remain close to God. It is a failure to trust God. It is a failure to trust that what God has promised, He will deliver. Sin is a decision to go through the drive-through and to grab something easy when we know that we were made for something better. The gifts of God take patience and faith to harvest. The treasures of heaven are expensive, and it takes a long time to save enough spiritual capital to purchase them. The vocation to which God has called us can seem mysterious and remote. We get tired of waiting for it with faith. We want something easier, something now. Sin is a failure to wait for what God has in mind for us.
Sin results from believing the great illusion that God is farther away that He really is. It is believing the great illusion that God is so far away, that maybe He doesn't care. Maybe He doesn't see. Maybe He doesn't exist at all. Jesus came to be as close to us as we are to ourselves by taking on our humanity. He was born to be God-with-us! He came to save us from this illusion that ultimately we are alone. Still, it is hard to trust Him.
When we do not trust God, our tendency to give into illusions grows. Damaged by sin, our faith does not see as far into the future. Our hope dims. Our love grows cold. St. Peter tells us however, that God is still there. Even if we decide to move away from God, if God decides to be with us, we can't get any farther away. We can ignore how close He is, but we cannot move Him away from us. Even a mustard's seed of faith can tell us what is true. Even a tiny bit of faith tells us what our senses fail to perceive, that God is still there. Jesus who descended into the depths of hell is still there. Deciding to acknowledge His presence and His help is the way forward.
In Jesus there is no sin. None of us could make it more than five minutes with the devil in the desert. Jesus made it for forty days. He made it through the final agony in the garden. He is there to help us at our weakest point, to begin loving us there. If we acknowledge His presence, we have a way forward no matter how sick we have become.
Being delivered from evil is a decision to be with Jesus who alone has the power over temptation and evil. Jesus is right next to us, and if we acknowledge His presence, sin has no more power over us. If we really want Him to, He will deliver us from evil. Yet He will not take back one ounce of the freedom that He gave us. Jesus has made His decision to be with us no matter what. Yet we must still make our decision +m
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