The Holy Door and Sacred Time:
The Theological and Symbolic Meaning of the Jubilee
by Marinella Perroni
On December 24, an elderly Pope will pass, not without effort but with determination, through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. The door is called “holy” and was sealed at the end of the previous jubilee, the extraordinary one that began on November 29, 2015, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and was dedicated to mercy. The symbolic power of this gesture is immense: Francis will break down that wall and be the first to enter the basilica, which today represents the heart of Catholicism, but not alone, as everyone is invited to follow his lead throughout the year, to enter it, if not physically, at least in the spirit of the shared intentions presiding over the jubilee year. This time, as it is an ordinary jubilee rather than an extraordinary one, alongside the Holy Door of St. Peter’s and those of the other three Roman basilicas, Francis will open another door—that of a prison, a place where, precisely because it cannot be physically crossed, it powerfully evokes the need for liberation.
On the other hand, at the root of the Christian adoption of the Jewish jubilee practice are, perhaps, the words of the prophet Isaiah, which Jesus, in the sermon with which he inaugurates his messianic mission in the synagogue of Nazareth, applies to himself. The prophet said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me and sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). With this gesture and through that door, then, the Pope, and with him the whole Church, does not enter merely a space recognized as sacred but also a time recognized as holy—a “year of grace.”
The Sanctification of Time
The jubilee year is one of the many inheritances Christianity owes to Judaism, particularly to its grand vision of the sanctification of time. For human beings, time represents, along with space, the quintessential condition of life. Yet it also represents the great adversary, as it erodes life and brings us closer to death. After all, is not the god of time, Saturn/Chronos, son of Heaven and Mother Earth, who devours his own children, part of the pantheon of pagan deities? With the “invention” of the Sabbath—the distinction between time reserved for human works and time reserved for God—Israel performed a decisive operation: humans are not dominated by time but master it by acknowledging that God is the Lord of time because He imprinted His creation with the law of alternating activity and rest. There is someone, in short, who is stronger than time, the only one who can even “redeem” time because, with the gift of eternal life, He takes away death’s “sting,” as Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth (1 Corinthians 15:55).
The seventh day, the Sabbath, as well as the sabbatical year, which occurred every seven years, sanctified the rhythm of days, weeks, and months. Later, the institution of the jubilee year further reinforced the sabbatical scheme, anchoring it to an even more extended measure of time: “The land will observe a Sabbath rest for the Lord: for six years you shall sow your field and prune your vineyard and gather their fruits; but the seventh year shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord […] You shall count seven weeks of years, that is, seven times seven years, making forty-nine years. On the tenth day of the seventh month, you shall sound the trumpet; on the Day of Atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout the land. You shall declare the fiftieth year holy and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants […] The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; you shall neither sow nor reap what the fields produce of themselves, nor gather grapes from unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee: it shall be holy to you […]” (Leviticus 25:1-12).
In the jubilee year, everything was to return to its origins, to be brought back into God’s hands: the land was left to rest, debts were forgiven, and slaves were freed. Thus, the time of history was sanctified.
Whether ancient Israel ever managed to observe this regulation or whether it merely represented the ideal of a social model is a topic of scholarly debate. What is certain is that medieval Christianity and later Roman Catholicism adopted the jubilee year norm after spiritualizing its contours: the forgiveness of sins’ consequences replaced the restoration of the land and history to God, and the indispensable mediation of the Church for salvation, including eternal salvation, was strongly affirmed. Then, as foreseen by the Psalmist, God Himself would pass through the gates of time to dwell on earth: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, ancient doors, that the King of Glory may enter” (Psalm 24:7).
I Am the Door
A reality, a metaphor, a symbol: the door also strongly evokes another fundamental dimension of the jubilee—that of the space to be inhabited, whether that of a house, a city, a country, or life itself. We don’t always realize it, but every day we constantly cross doors, opening and closing them: sentinels ensuring the plurality of spaces and the definition of places, doors map our journey and mark it, often almost imperceptibly.
Massive or light, golden like those of the Kremlin or made of fabric like those in refugee camps, doors are also an important metaphor for life and its ambivalent dynamics, as they refer to vital actions determining the quality of the times and spaces in which life unfolds: entering and exiting, opening and closing, welcoming and dismissing. For this reason, the door can ultimately assume a symbolic quality in the religious realm, as evidenced by the prominence it is given during one of the significant times in the Catholic Church’s life—the jubilee year.
Exploring the symbolic meaning of the “Holy Door” is also possible through the Bible. As the great book of God-with-humanity, the Bible is full of doors that, whether marking the thresholds of houses or cities, point to clear theological content. Here, we recall only two from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament that help us discern possible theological meanings of the jubilee door.
After the famous dream of the ladder resting on earth but reaching heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it, the patriarch Jacob recognizes that the place where one encounters God must be consecrated to Him, losing its ordinary meaning to become the place of God’s presence—the place from which one accesses heaven: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17). The door of God’s house allows entry into an “other” space, where God is present and thoughts become “visions” revealing the meaning of our lives. Metaphorically, birth and death are the doors through which we enter life and leave it, and for the Bible, they are not unguarded, nor do they mechanically determine the passage from one phase to another. Instead, as the Psalmist acknowledges, God, the guardian of life, “will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore” (Psalm 121:8).
However, doors also govern the transition between inside and outside, between the need for belonging that provides protection and the freedom that gives life its vigor. For this reason, the most theologically significant expression of the door’s symbolic power becomes christological when Jesus identifies it with Himself.
In a discourse in John’s Gospel, as compelling as it is complex, Jesus first describes Himself as the true shepherd of the flock because, unlike the people’s leaders, who are wolves disguised as shepherds, He alone can enter the sheepfold through the door. Then, He immediately identifies the sheepfold’s door with Himself: “Very truly I tell you, I am the door for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them” (John 10:7-8). As always, Jesus reveals His identity as the Messiah only to those who can penetrate the image, grasp its symbolic power, and actualize it: it is through Him that His flock can exit the sheepfold without fear and find the pasture that sustains them, and it is through Him that they can return and be safe from the wolves.
When the Pope inaugurates the jubilee year of grace on Christmas Eve by passing through the Holy Door, he will also call on his Church to return to God through the only door granting access to salvation—the revelation of the Father made by the Son: “I am the door: if anyone enters by me, he will be saved; he will come in and go out and find pasture” (John 10:9).
By Marinella Perroni
Biblical Scholar
