Sermon for the Fifth Vespers of Lent

“I and the Father are one.”

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Let us now complete our meditation upon the Lord’s prayer.

We pray simply: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil.’

In these petitions, every truly godly and Christian prayer
is summarized; that being redeemed by our Lord and brought into the communion
of His Holy Church, we might there remain; that we might not give way to the
countless temptations of this world; but that when the devil, the evil one, our
ancient enemy, stalks us in the dark night of our adversity, the Father might
deliver us from his murderous grasp, even as He delivered the Israelites from
the oppression of the Egyptians in long lost days.

We will indeed be tempted. We must be tried, tested, that we
might be proven to be the Children of God. For it is was right and proper that
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, be assaulted in the wilderness by Satan, thus to
prove His divine sonship; thus to prove the weakness of the devil against those
guarded by the Father; so it is right that we too be brought into the contest,
that we too do battle with the devil; with our Father, the source of all love
and triumph, of all being and purpose, looking onto the field. And even as good
soldiers of old were inspired to victory by the onlooking gaze of the general
who had trained and commanded them, so the Father sends us out just as He sent
out Christ the Son, that we might ourselves attain victory through Him and His
Spirit, and thus deride and mock the devil, the cause of our fall, and so
demonstrate that we have become God’s children, knowing that ‘God is
faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with
temptation, he also provides the way of a proper end.’

Therefore we pray ‘deliver us from evil.’ For we are
prepared for the fight, in imitation of Our Lord and Redeemer, that we might ‘complete
the sufferings of Christ’ and fulfill the will of God in courage and in
glory, knowing that the salvation of God is ever over us. We shall be conformed
to Christ, to His suffering, to His war, to His resurrection, to His conquest.
Let us therefore rejoice in the struggle, knowing that we have been found
worthy of the conflict by our Heavenly Father, blessed is He, and that,
regardless of the wounds and injuries, the fallings and routes we might endure,
He will grant us the victory.

Now let us see Our Lord’s prayer as a whole. We have noted
before that this prayer is first and foremost the prayer of Jesus Christ. It is
Our Lord’s prayer, and we have endeavored to see how each petition applies first
to His own life, and only after that, to ours.

Then let us realize how the prayer as a whole is the prayer
of Christ’s life. 

For He and His Spirit from all eternity were with and in
God: So from eternity He prays ‘Our Father.’

From all eternity the Word of His Spirit proceeded from Him
unto the Father, blessing the name of the Father eternally. So from eternity He
prays from within the Trinity ‘Hallowed be thy name.’

And hearing the will of the Father, that mankind might not
be lost, but that all humanity return to Him and be His people forevermore, a
New Israel in a New Jerusalem, He ‘was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the
Virgin Mary, and was made man.’ For from within the womb of Mary, the infant
Christ prayed ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven, my Father.’

And being born unto this earth, He sought no success or
material gain, He sought no name or honor, but sought only the will of God,
living in complete dependency upon the infinite goodness of the Father. So He
prayed: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’

And seeking to redeem us, sinful humanity, who had in
disobedience condemned our race, He was washed in the river Jordan, and took
upon Himself all our iniquity, that in Him, our iniquity might be put to death.
Himself forgiving, and yet Himself forgiven; He who knew no sin, but became
sin for us. So He prayed: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us.’ 

And soon, He shall go to the cross, to suffer, to bleed, to
plead for mankind from the blood of His wounds, and to descend into Hell, into
the citadel of demons, there to strike at the heart of Satan’s power, there to
sack the city of hell. So he prays ‘deliver us from evil.’

See, then, how this is truly our Lord’s prayer, that in each
of its petitions, the fullness of the Son’s being and mission are laid forth.

And yet we make it our own, we who are in Him.

Though we pray the prayer as it was taught to us by Christ,
perhaps it is best to understand it as also our prayer in reverse.

For we are born in subjugation to Satan, to His onslaughts
and assaults. So we must pray for our baptism, our redemption, crying out to
the Father ‘Deliver us from evil!’

We are formed in sin and iniquity, damned, and in
condemnation. So we must plead for our atonement through the mysteries of
Christ and His Church, pleading in the dark hours of shame, ‘forgive us our
trespasses.’

And even in the Church, baptized and nursed by Our Lord’s
flesh and blood, yet we must forsake all the idols of this infernal world that
promise us the satisfaction of every earthly desire, and find our fulfillment
and sustenance in God alone. So we must ask in the dawn of our labor, ‘give
us this day our daily bread.’

And being upheld by the benevolence of our Father, we therefore
are conformed to His divine beauty, to do those glorious works of His will,
hidden in inglorious callings, that in all things, this cursed world might
become as the heaven of angels; that our soul, subdued by the love of God might
by His grace itself become heaven on earth. So we whisper throughout the work
of our daylight ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.’

And this we do gladly, dear Christian, in ecstasy, counting
even our sufferings as joy. For when it is all finished, and the race of
our life is complete; when it has come to an end, and the battle of this world
is over, an angel shall bear you up from your coffin, from this mortal coil
unto the great majesty of heaven, to the splendor of the throne of our God,
surrounded by seraph and angel of life, honored with the crown of victory for
the struggle of life, that we might look up, guarded by Christ and all the
saints on every side, and pray the final and only prayer we shall pray ever
again, and forevermore:

‘Our Father.’

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