The Holy Door.

"I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved..."

On Christmas Eve night, when the Holy Father knocks with a silver hammer to break the seal on the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica, he will be repeating a Catholic ritual more than five centuries old.

The opening of the Holy Door marks the beginning of a Jubilee or Holy Year. The first Jubilee was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, to be repeated once each century. By 1343 Pope Clement VI changed the interval to 50 years. Under Pope Urban VI, a 33-year interval was adopted (the life-span of Christ on earth). Finally, in 1470 Pope Paul II reduced the interval for "ordinary Jubilees" to 25 years, and thus it has remained. An "ordinary Jubilee" falls every 25 years. and an "extraordinary Jubilee" can be proclaimed as the Pope sees fit. There have been 95 extraordinary Jubilees. The Great Jubilee Year 2000 will be the 26th ordinary Jubilee in the history of the Church.

Accounts of opening special doors in connection with a Jubilee date back to the 14th century. Early references also link Holy Doors to the concept of "sanctuary," which churches have traditionally provided for those being pursued by legal or military authorities. Sanctuary was always a temporary refuge, allowing a "cooling off' period during which church officials could take steps to ensure that the accused would receive fair treatment. It is thought that the tradition of sealing the Holy Door except during special periods of grace may have come about when criminals began abusing the right of Sanctuary.

Pope Martin V designated the first Holy Door in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and initiated a ceremonial opening for the extraordinary Jubilee Year 1423. Why the Lateran and not St. Peter's? Because the Lateran is the Cathedral Church (Cathedra = chair)of the Bishop of Rome. This is the location of his see.

The original Church was a gift from Emperor Constantine after he ended the persecution of Christianity, accepting it as the new religion of the Empire. It is therefore the oldest legal Church in Christendom and carries the inscription above its entrance: "Mother and Head of the churches of the city and the world."

It is named Lateran because it was built near the Lateran palace and John after its two secondary patrons, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Its real name, however, is Church of the Saviour.

The custom as we now know it, of a ritual opening of Holy Doors at each of the four major Roman basilicas (St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls) was first established by Pope Alexander VI in the year 1500. The ceremony, and its Christmas Eve setting, have been handed down to us in an unbroken five-century tradition.

The Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica will be officially opened on December 24, 1999, and re-sealed one year later. The concrete seal will have been loosened before the ceremony so that just enough of it remains to be broken completely when struck with a hammer. The Holy Father will knock at the door three times while singing the versicle "Open unto me the gates of justice." When the masonry falls at his third stroke, the doors will be opened, the threshold swept and cleaned, and the procession will pass into St. Peter's for a solemn vespers. When the door is closed on January 6, 2001 (Epiphany), the ceremony will take place in reverse, with the Pope applying three trowels of mortar and laying three stones to set the seal on the door until the next Jubilee.

The symbolism of the Holy Door is best expressed by the Pope himself, in the Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, issued on the First Sunday of Advent, 1998. It evokes the passage from sin to grace which every Christian is called to accomplish. Jesus said: "I am the door" (John 10:7), in order to make it clear that no one can come to the Father except through him... the one and absolute way to salvation.

To focus upon the door is to recall the responsibility of every believer to cross its threshold. It is a decision which presumes freedom to choose and also the courage to leave something behind, in the knowledge that what is gained is divine life (Matthew 13:44-46). Through the holy door, Christ will lead us more deeply into the Church, his Body and his Bride.

The door as a medium of Christian art

The use of large, imposing doors as a medium of devotional art is a long tradition in Catholic church architecture. One of the oldest examples adorns the fifth-century Church of Santa Sabina in Rome. Only about half the original carved wooden panels remain, but they include what may be the oldest extant depiction of the crucifixion.

With the explosion of Church architecture which began the second millennium, it became common practice to hold design competitions for important building projects. One of the most famous of these was for the honour of creating the bronze doors of the cathedral baptistery in Florence, Italy. The winner, Lorenzo Ghiberti, devoted over forty years to completing some of the most magnificent bronze door panels in all of Christendom.

There are five sets of doors giving entry to St. Peter's Basilica. The Holy Door is the smallest, and is the one set furthest to the right. It is decorated with cast bronze panels, eight on each door, depicting events of Salvation History, from the expulsion of Adam and Eve and the Annunciation, to the passion and resurrection of Jesus. The central doorway to St. Peter's dates from the original Constantinian basilica, its wooden doors now covered with 15th-century bronze panels on the lives of Saints Peter and Paul.

The other three doors were wooden until the 20th century, when a competition was held to create bronze panels for them. Three artists developed designs for the Door of Good and Evil, the Door of Life, and the Door of Death. This last is the door through which the bodies of cardinals and bishops pass for their funerals, but it is also named for its chilling depictions of death, as it comes to saints and Popes, to Christ and his Mother, and to nameless ordinary people. These were completed in the 1960s.

A special precedent for the third millennium

The ancient Jubilee tradition of opening the Holy Doors at the four patriarchal basilicas has always been carried out by four different people, the Pope and three Cardinal Legates. For the first time, on the occasion of Jubilee 2000, the Pope himself will open all four Holy Doors. He will start at St. Peter's on Christmas Eve at 11:00 p.m., then go to St. John Lateran in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The Holy Doors at St. Mary Major will be opened on January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. And the door at St. Paul Outside the Walls will be opened at the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18.

Direct to your door

As part of the Jubilee, Catholics are being encouraged to participate in the Holy Door tradition. Parishes are invited to bless one church door as a Jubilee door for the duration of the Holy Year. There is also a blessing for a door at home, by which families may create their own Jubilee door together.

One might wonder about the appropriateness of trying to sanctify the same front door that kids and dogs and harried parents have been passing through each day without much thought. The word "sanctum" literally means "fenced off, set apart." If every house on the street can have a "holy door," can holiness retain its meaning? Author Thomas Howard thinks so. "We do, in fact, walk daily among the hallows...carrying on the commonplace routines of our ordinary life in the presence of mighty mysteries that would ravish and terrify us if this veil of ordinariness were suddenly stripped away...Our task now...is to offer whatever we do have...as a continual oblation." There is much to be said for reclaiming our Jewish roots in a domestic faith, embodied in the Sabbath meal and the mezuzah on the doorpost.

The threshold of hope

On Christmas Eve night, our Holy Father will be the first to pass through the Holy Door, solemnly perhaps, but without fear. In a world surrendering to cynicism, this Pope dares us across a "threshold of hope." In a world where the culture of death has people paralysed in defeat, or racing to escape reality, this Pope will walk peacefully into the next millennium in absolute faith that he is in good company--with "Christ who walks through the centuries alongside each generation, alongside every person...as a friend... the only Friend who will not disappoint."

Claudia Sommers is executive director of St. Philip Neri House, the Catholic chaplaincy at Ryerson Polytechnic University which is run by the Fathers of the Toronto Oratory.