‘DELIVERANCE PRAYER AND DOXOLOGY’ (for the Kingdom)
Perhaps
you may have wondered why when the Our Father is recited at Mass we do
not say Amen, yet at other times in private recitation we do. This is
because at Mass the Our Father leads straight into another prayer.
A
literary development from a text is called ‘embolism’ from the Greek
meaning ‘piece added to the garment’. The embolism used here is ‘Deliver
us, Lord from every evil…’ This Deliverance prayer, as it is sometimes called, goes back to the time of St Gregory the Great (6th
century). We are waiting in joyful hope for the coming in glory of
Jesus. We can wait in hope because we know that Christ has not left us
orphans, and through the Church in the Mass and the Sacraments we are
able to meet the Risen Christ in our midst.
In
waiting in joyful hope therefore, we can indeed be delivered from every
evil and be protected from all anxiety because in faith we know that
the risen Christ does indeed offer us peace and mercy.
When
the priest says this prayer, his hands are extended; it is an
invitation to pray and also a visual sign to us of Christ. Christ,
through the priest invites us to pray for deliverance of every evil, all
anxieties, temptations and he extends to us the gifts of peace and
mercy.
Our response to this wonderful prayer is ‘For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever’. This is known as the Doxology, and by including it in the Mass, we are also showing some unity with other Christian brothers and sisters.
It also expresses the reality that Christ is the alpha and omega and is ‘on the throne’ in our hearts.
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