Cardinal Harvey closes Holy Door at St Paul’s Outside the Walls

By Edoardo Giribaldi

Christian hope does not ignore the wars, crises, injustices and confusion that the world is experiencing today, Cardinal James Michael Harvey, Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, said in his homily during the Eucharistic celebration with the closing of the Holy Door, which took place Sunday morning, 28 December.

To escape, to flee from the reality of one’s own limitations and imperfections, from the wounded collective history of today; or to remain, chained in one’s own inner prisons, allowing resignation to become a habit and then a wound: these are two opposite and complementary movements, like the opening and closing of a Holy Door.

Yet, in these last two, the memory of a mercy that is not consumed is preserved, of a “salvation already given” which, once introduced into history, becomes a seed capable of sprouting without withering. This is the horizon of meaning evoked by the cardinal.

Peace and the only hope

The sun high above the statue of St Paul, in the centre of the Basilica’s quadriportico, warmed the faithful who had gathered for the liturgy, allaying the harsh winter temperatures.

The Holy Door is located on the right side of the façade, under whose cross stands the inscription “Spes unica”. And “the only hope,” as the American cardinal recalled at Mass, lies in the “Cross of Christ”: an “Easter” wish that sprouts from the unconditional gift of self and “blooms in the new life of the resurrection.”

Nearby, the phrase engraved on the Holy Door that has accompanied pilgrims throughout the year – “Ad sacram Pauli cunctis venientibus aedem – sit pacis donum perpetuumque salus” – is a constant hope that the ‘gift of peace’ may truly spread in a world marked by “wars, crises, injustices and confusion.”

The closing of the Holy Door

The closing ceremony was marked by a contemplative silence that accompanied Cardinal Harvey to the Holy Door, whose three panels recall the three years of preparation for the Holy Year 2000, requested by St John Paul II and dedicated to the Father, rich in mercy “to the Holy Spirit, the principal agent of evangelisation” and to the Son, the Redeemer. The cardinal knelt before it and, after a few moments of prayerful reflection, closed its doors.

Hope in the ‘struggle of life’

Reaching a conclusion “is always a moment in time,” the cardinal emphasised in his homily, “while God’s mercy remains perpetually open.” The invitation is precisely to continue on the path of “conversion and hope” inspired by the Holy Year.

In the church dedicated to the memory of St Paul, the words from the Letter to the Romans resound with particular force: “hope does not disappoint”, which accompanied the entire Jubilee.

Much more than a mere “motto,” these words are a true “profession of faith”. The Apostle of the Gentiles entrusts these words to history in the awareness of the “hardship of life,” having experienced imprisonment, persecution, and “apparent failure.” Yet hope does not fail, because it is not based on fragile human abilities, but “on God’s faithful love.”

Entering the space of mercy

The Holy Door is therefore not merely a physical threshold, but a passageway to be crossed, leaving behind “what weighs on the heart” in order to enter “the space of mercy”.

Crossing it, the cardinal archpriest added, means renouncing all “pretensions of self-sufficiency” and humbly entrusting oneself to “the One who alone can give full meaning to our lives.”

The passage is also linked to the penitential journey, as a place of “return to communion” and “a sign of return to the Father’s house” — a gesture that, over the years, has not lost its symbolic power: “God never closes the door to man; it is man who is called to pass through it.”

Waiting for salvation already given

Hope, but also faith and charity, have been described by Pope Francis as the “heart of Christian life.” The virtue linked to the 2025 Jubilee, says Cardinal Harvey, goes far beyond “naive optimism” and any “escape from reality.”

As he himself recalled at the opening of the Holy Door on 5 January 2025, it is not an “empty word” or a “vague desire for things to go well.” Rather, hope means waiting with confidence for the “salvation already given” and still on its way to fulfilment: a fulfilment that unfolds in human history, to be traversed with our gaze “fixed on Christ,” facing pain in the certainty that “the last word belongs to life and salvation.”

The Mass in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls   (@VATICAN MEDIA)

The courage to descend into the depths, free from chains

These are therefore anything but abstract aspirations, conveyed through the “conversion of the heart” and the liberating experience of forgiveness lived in the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Pope Francis insisted on this aspect, and his successor, Pope Leo XIV, returned to it, Cardinal Harvey said, explaining that hope is nourished by finding the courage to “go deep,” digging “beneath the surface of reality” and breaking through the “crust of resignation”. A fragile virtue, but one with the immense potential “to change the world.”

The cardinal again highlighted the figure of St Paul who, having experienced his own weakness, affirmed in his Second Letter to the Corinthians that it was precisely in this weakness, through his encounter with Christ, that he drew his strength. The chains of the prisons in which he was imprisoned — from Philippi to Jerusalem, from Caesarea to Rome — did not stifle his yearning for trust, consolation, and hope. “No prison can extinguish the inner freedom of those who live in Christ.”

The greatest hope

The cardinal archpriest recalled that Pope Benedict XVI dedicated his encyclical Spe salvi to hope, in which he emphasised how man needs “many hopes” to illuminate his path: small and large, but all converging in the one great hope, God Himself, in His “human face,” manifested as a “living and present reality” that embraces the entire history of humanity.

It is a love that sustains perseverance in daily life, even in a world marked by “imperfection and limitation,” because it guarantees the existence of what man ultimately desires: “life that is truly life”.

Cardinal James Michael Harvey during the Mass   (@VATICAN MEDIA)

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The pilgrim’s responsibility

Passing through the Holy Door thus becomes an invitation to “return to the world”, bearing witness in the ordinary to the gift received.

It is a journey that is both interior and concrete, passing through the recognition of one’s own limitations and the “incompleteness of one’s gaze,” entrusting oneself to the guidance of the Lord. It is a step-by-step process, as in prayer, trusting that each step is sufficient.

Every pilgrim, Harvey emphasised, bears the responsibility of being a credible witness to what they have received, a “humble but luminous sign of God’s presence” in a world marked by “divisions and fears.”

The open doors of the heart

This is a burden that the saints have taken on, remaining faithful to the places entrusted to them in history and living the hope of everyday life, like the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, remembered in today’s liturgy: an ordinary life made up of silent work, “mutual care” and listening to God’s will in the various circumstances of existence. Gestures repeated with love, and therefore capable of shining, sustained by a trust that “perseveres even in darkness.”

“As the Holy Door closes,” the cardinal concluded, “may the door of faith, charity and hope remain open in our hearts. May the door of mission remain open, because the world needs Christ.”

The Holy Door of the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls was the third of the papal basilicas to be closed. The first was that of St Mary Major, on Christmas Day. On the morning of Saturday 27 December, it was the turn of St John Lateran. Pope Leo XIV will close the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica on 6 January, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.

The Mass in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls   (@VATICAN MEDIA)