“Who will take me into the fortified city?”

This has been my prayer for life, my daily longing, the aim of all my efforts and the crown of all my hopes. To enter the city. To penetrate its walls, to get past its fortresses, to reach its heart, yes, its heart, not only its heart of cobbled stones in the central square that rules its map and its life with the speed of its traffic and the efficiency of its business, but the heart of its culture, its history, the heart of its social life, its character, its personality. I want to enter the city. I want to reach its heart.

I live in the city, but, in a way, out of the city. Not quite a part of it, not quite identified with it, not quite belonging. Surely I pay taxes to the municipality and vote in its elections, I am a citizen in full right, I drink its water and board its buses. I can shop in its bazaars and relax in its gardens; I know the labyrinth of its streets and the design of its skyline. And yet I know I am not quite part of the city I call mine.

I feel a stranger in my city, or rather the city as a stranger to me. Alien, cold, remote. The city is secular, and I, because you are with me, am sacred. I bring your presence with me, Lord, whenever I walk into the city, and that makes my steps sound strange in the bustle of profane noise. I represent you, and you, Lord, have no place in the planned capitals of modern man and woman.

The bulwarks and battlements of the modern city against you, Lord, and against me in so far as I represent you, are not masonry walls or crenelated towers; they are more subtle and more formidable. They are just materialism, secularism, indifference. People have no time; people don’t care. The things of the spirit find no place in the city of man. There is no question of vanquishing armies, but of winning attention; we don’t want to obtain a victory, just to obtain a hearing. And that is the most difficult thing to obtain in this busy would of indifferent people.

I want to walk into the city, not with the anonymous curiosity of a tourist, but with the message of a prophet and with the challenge of a believer. I want to make you present in it, Lord, with the urgency of your love and the totality of your truth. I want to enter the city in your name and with your grace to sanctify in public consecration the habitation of man.

“Who will take me into the fortified city?”

Only you can do it, Lord, as the city is yours by right. Your words proclaim your dominion over all cities in the land:

“I will go up now and measure out Shechem;
I will divide the valley of Succoth into plots;
Gilead and Manasseh are mine;
Ephraim is my helmet,
Judah my sceptre;
Moab is my wash-bowl,
I fling my shoes at Edom;
Philistia is the target of my anger.”

The city is yours, Lord. “Who can guide me to Edom?” Who will take me into the heart of the city where I live, who will make me present where I already am, who will bring down prejudice and ignorance and indifference to open the way for the light not only in the privacy of men’s hearts but in the meetings and groups of open ways and public squares? Who will pull down the walls of the fortified city?