One, one hundred, one thousand Holy doors. But the Door is only Him

There are a thousand doors, since the Door is one. The door is Him. The gesture of Jesus towards the widow Naim was a door-gesture. The gesture towards Jairus mourning his daughter was a door-gesture. The words with which He stopped the stones meant for the adulterous woman were door-words. When Andrew and John met him for the fist time and watched him speak with that very deepness and wisdom that won them over, they felt their life would open a new door. The wide-open arms on the cross to welcome all the suffering and all the sky were the ripped-apart doors of His heart.

The gesture whereby Pope Francis indicated manifold doors worldwide as the “holy doors” of the Jubilee of Mercy, in Churches and in prisons, is powerful and simple. He took a sign and stripped it of its rituality, which tends to screen all signs, despite their importance, and he reaffirmed their significance. There are many doors, but the Door is one, because the Door is Him.

I’m no theologian. Don’t expect in-depth disquisitions. However, I do know what it means to be kept out of a door. I know what it means to rest our foreheads on closed doors and weep, I know the open doors of the heart. I know that often we have to pass through a door not knowing what lies beyond it.

The symbol of the holy door has ancient roots. Bu the primary root is a door that opens up to those who are seeking God, sign of the opening of the Smile of the Supreme Being for those who seek Him. It’s the only door that counts. The Pope has said: this door is near us. It doesn’t lie in a distant Temple or on a mount. It’s right near us.

While the powerful close their doors; while far too many don’t know which door to knock on to to have bread and work, while for too many youths and too many old people the doors of solitude are closed, while those suffering with infinite pain don’t know which door to knock on in the silence of their tears, Pope Francis said the “Door” is open, it’s near us. He said what the faith of the people has always known. He said what the faith of the Christian people, the door-opener, has always known. We are not the sons and daughters of a God that is seated on a distant mount, behind closed doors, that can be reached only at the cost of inhuman ordeals. We are the friends of a God that is open to us, that has sent his Son, a part of his heart, to be Door, to tear down the locks of the law, to demolish the other doors of death. The holy door is holy precisely because it is a sign of Him. The rite counts, but it is worthless if it doesn’t lead to a flesh, a home, a community, a place where life knows the good Face of destiny: namely, if it doesn’t lead to the heart-door of Jesus.

A superficial reading of the multiplication of doors for the Jubilee interprets it as a banal “decentralization”. As if the Pope and the Church were an insurance company with branch offices. As if the Church herself were an agency. These contemptible commentators fail to understand that it is not a decentralization, but rather the most powerful centralization.

Its purpose is not to “de-Romanize” the Church. Those who make these claims perhaps have never experienced the life of Christian communities located in the farthest areas of the world, nor have they ever known the authentic church. The authentic Church knows that the Pope is not the sector-manager, he is not the chief of the main offices, it’s the Church that has always opened her doors to the forlorn whom everybody else left out. It’s the Church that does not close her doors to those scarred by suffering and violence. These petty commentators – maybe even voyers – fail to understand that it’s a gesture of centralization, the greatest ever, which implies turning our hearts to the presence of Jesus, the man-door of God.

The door is one, it’s Him. The eyes at the door that is Him. Before His Face that startled his friends while He tore down the closed doors of the Temple, it’s the smile that demolished the walls of evil and remorse, it’s His gesture that healed the disabled. The doors are many, the Door is one. His disciples, the church, the known and the unknown Church, have replicated those gestures thousands of times. He became “open door” across the world. And in this Jubilee of Mercy Pope Francis has reminded it to those distracted with a simple and powerful decision. As if to say: look within the rite, look at what the sign indicates us. The Popes have this task, after all: to indicate. To be the guides who show the way. Indeed, the story of the Christian community is full of signs, rites and liturgies. There are “effective signs”, that are the sacraments, the only case where the sign and the meaning fully coincide. The piece of bread is truly the body of Jesus, it is His forgiveness. There are also signs that indicate and do not correspond to their meaning: many gestures, many objects, all the works of art. The beautiful “Pietà” by Michelangelo, a capstone of human genius, is a sign. While the sacraments make their meaning present and effective, all art masterpieces, as Baudelaire used to say, are but “an ardent hiccup” at the feet of the eternity, which they indicate. The Jubilee can serve as a major effort of re-education to the signs. When today we say we are living in the age of communication, we often forget that it is starred with signs. And the Church has been a master of human life through speech and lived testimony, made of a plethora of signs. However, for this reason, the contemporary “good battle” on faith is also fought on the signs. The degradation, the depletion of the signs is one of the roads that are used by the opponents of the increasingly disturbing presence of the Church. So we shall reinvent them.