The door closes an area, it is a limit; but it also allows passage if it is open. At his general audience on November 18, Francis explained the meaning of "the door of God's Mercy." This refers to the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, which will be opened during the Jubilee Year, to invite us to conversion staff and also to welcome and forgive others.

Since ancient religions the door has a rich symbolism. In Eastern religions and in Mesopotamia, doors to heaven and the underworld are mentioned. The Egyptians guarded temple doors with lion figures. The Romans even had a god guardian of the gates, who was represented with two faces, as signifying a before and an after: Janus (from which comes ianuarius, January, and also ianua, door).

The passage through a door to the afterlife is also found in the Bible. Sentences were passed inside the city gates. The gates symbolize the king's power or trust in him and derivatively in God. The gate can signify the limit, which God has imposed, for example, on the sea or on life, and which he himself can break through.

In the New Testament the meaning of the gate as access to eternal happiness is developed. Jesus exhorts us: "Strive to enter by the narrow door" (Lk 13:24), lest the master of the house enter and close the door, and even if you knock on it, he will not recognize you. The door is a symbol of salvation, as we read in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (cf. Mt 25:1-12). This is why they are sometimes depicted on the doors of churches, where a scene of the Last Judgment can also appear.

Pope Francis points out that the whole Church, the "churches" or temples, and all ecclesial institutions and Christian communities, must always keep their doors open to facilitate meeting with God. "The Lord," he observes, "never forces the door: He too asks permission to enter, He asks permission, He does not force the door.

This is what he says in the book of Revelation: "I stand at the door and knock - let us imagine the Lord knocking at the door of our heart. If anyone hears my voice and opens to me, I will come into his house and we will dine together" (3:20). And towards the end of the same book he prophesies about the future City of God: "Its gates will not be shut during the day", that is, forever, because "there will be no night in it" (21:25).

Contemporary life," the Pope continues, "has brought with it the need to close, or even armor, many doors. But it would not be good to extend this to our whole life, in the family and in the city, in society and in the Church: "A Church that is not a hospital, as well as a family closed in on itself, mortifies the Gospel and withers the world. No armored doors in the Church, nothing, everything open!

Francis delves into the anthropological symbolism of the door. "The door must guard, certainly, but not reject. The door must not be forced, on the contrary, permission is asked, because hospitality shines in the freedom of welcome, and is obscured in the arrogance of invasion. The door is often opened, to see if outside there is someone waiting, and perhaps does not have the courage, or even the strength to knock."

And looking at our current status , that of Christians and of the Church, he exclaims: "How many people have lost confidence, they do not have the courage to knock at the door of our Christian heart, the doors of our churches, which are there! They do not have the courage, we have taken away their confidence".

The Pope wishes to bring the meaning of the door to its very center: the person of Jesus: "He enlightens us at every door of life, even that of our birth and death. He himself said: 'I am the door. He who enters by me will be saved; he may come in and go out and find his food' (Jn 10:9)".

Jesus is the door that leads us in and out, because the flock of God is a shelter, not a prison! God's house is a shelter, not a prison." The thieves try to avoid the door, because of their evil intentions. But Jesus is the door and his voice is familiar to us. With him we are saved, we can enter and leave without danger.

Francis takes the opportunity to thank the work of those who guard the doors in churches and other ecclesial institutions, because they are able, by their prudence and kindness, with their smile, to offer an image of humanity and welcome. In fact, they are there to facilitate the opening of the "door of faith" (Acts 14:27) on the way of salvation; so that they can receive the advertisement of the Gospel, as the door of the word or of preaching (cf. Col 4:3).

The guardian of the sheep is also the Church as a whole, in every place and at every moment, who opens and lets in all the sheep that the Shepherd brings, all of them, even those lost in the forest, that the Good Shepherd has gone to look for them. The guardian does not choose them, they are all invited and chosen by the Lord.

And the door is also in the families. "The Holy Family of Nazareth knows well what an open or closed door means, for those who are expecting a child, for those who have no shelter, for those who are fleeing from danger". For this reason, he invites "Christian families to make the threshold of their homes a small great sign of the Door of mercy and of God's welcome".

"It is in this way," the Pope concludes, "that the Church will have to be recognized, in every corner of the earth: as the guardian of a God who touches, as the welcome of a God who does not close the door in your face, with the excuse that you are not from home.

All this, and the very fact that the Pope will open the Holy Door and with it the Year of Mercy, evokes that the Lord gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven: the greatest power, which is the service of the guardian over the door (cf. Mt 16:19).

The gate of the temple that Ezekiel saw, to the east, was closed (cf. Ez 44:1-3). St. Ambrose says that it represents Mary, because through her Christ, the sun of righteousness, entered (cf. De Virg. VII).

Also with reference letter to Mary, Newman points out that Mary is the door of heaven, because through her the Lord passed from heaven to earth. Mary's role was not simply that of a passive instrument. She said yes, with full warning of her mind and consent of her heart, to the Love that asked her to be the Mother of God. She assumed the highest of gifts along with the most difficult of duties, as manifested at the foot of the Cross. "It was by her consent that she became the Gate of Heaven" (John H. Newman, Meditations on the Litany of Loretto, II, 4: Janua coeli).

The Holy Door that will be opened at the Vatican evokes, then, the door of God's great Mercy. And also the door of our hearts, which must open to receive everyone, again in the words of the Pope, "both to receive God's forgiveness and to give our forgiveness and welcome all those who knock at our door".