Jesus grieves for Jerusalem, the so-called “city of God”, because He finds there a constant resistance of the Jews toward his mission. They used to stone, even killed the prophets who were sent to them to bring them back to the covenant. We know that the books of kings are witnessing a fundamental problem of the chosen people. They would like to have theirs own kings as their neighbors, the pagan nations, had. So, they wanted, in other word, to build up their own city. Yahweh sent them many prophets not only to legitimate the power of the kings of Israel, but to make them sure that He is their only God and Savior.

There is always a tension between human desire and God’s one. With our freedom and autonomy we tend to build up our own city, populated by our dreams, our wills, and sometimes by our disordered desires and attitudes. We struggle every day with the temptation coming from our inner world and mingled with our psychological mechanism. Being aware of the Pharisees’ threat that he would be killed by Herod, Jesus doesn’t give up. He’s the good shepherd who never abandons his flock. That’s why he said:”It wouldn’t be right for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem” (Lk 13:31-35). As one of prophets, he doesn’t surrender to build up the city of God as others prophets longed to realize. For it, he has to pay by his martyrdom.

The devil, I believe, could be a personification of our evil. God creates us and grant us the freedom, that’s a freedom to choose him or to reject him. The evil is the result of the freedom that doesn’t choose God. In our times, our modern life offers us many choices. They’re as attractive and seductive as the can kill us. We have to survive in this lifetime struggle, even it’s possible, to resist our own impulsion to deny God. Having resistance means standing or holding our ground. In order to hold our ground safe and strong, we have to ask Jesus his help every day through a continual prayer by which we can, like Paul, be certain of this : “neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our lord” (Rm 8:31-39).