And ask for deliverance from that .
In those moments, words from an ancient prayer often surface: Libranos del mal .
Deliver us from evil.
This is the one we refuse to look at. The capacity for cruelty inside your own heart. The grudge you nourish like a garden. The addiction you defend. The pride that masquerades as virtue. This is the evil Jesus pointed to when he said, “It’s not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out.” Libranos del Mal
Feel the weight of it.
We want God to deliver us from the enemy, but we refuse to be delivered from our hatred of the enemy.
There is a moment in the night—usually around 3:00 AM—when the silence feels heavy. Not empty, but occupied . The house settles, the wind hums, and suddenly, the fears you managed to silence with daylight come roaring back. It might be a memory of something you did. It might be a dread of something coming. Or it might be a nameless weight, a feeling that something is simply... wrong . And ask for deliverance from that
Libranos del Mal: Why We Need to Rethink the Darkness We Fear Most
This is the evil we love to hate: violence, corruption, abuse, injustice. It’s the news cycle that leaves us exhausted. It’s the tyrant, the trafficker, the liar. We want deliverance from them . And rightly so. This evil is real, and it breaks the world.
This is more subtle. It’s the gossip that feels justified. The indifference that masquerades as “minding your own business.” The systems we benefit from that crush the vulnerable. This evil doesn’t wear a black cape; it wears a business suit or a polite smile. We participate in it daily without ever feeling like a “bad person.” This is the one we refuse to look at
Libranos del mal is a cry for rescue from all three. But especially the third. Here is our great spiritual mistake: we spend our lives trying to build walls against the evil out there , while the evil in here (our own resentments, fears, and selfishness) runs the show.
Because until we are delivered from the evil within, no wall we build will ever be high enough to keep the evil out.
Li-bra-nos del mal.