Cardinal James Harvey closes the Holy Door at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, urging Christians to live hope grounded in trust, not escapism or despair.
Newsroom (30/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) At the papal basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, under a pale winter sun that softened the December chill, Cardinal James Michael Harvey brought the Jubilee celebrations to a close on Sunday morning. Before a gathered crowd of pilgrims and faithful, the Archpriest of the basilica closed the Holy Door—an act at once solemn and luminous—marking the end of a sacred cycle while affirming a call to begin anew.
In his homily, Cardinal Harvey returned to the central theme of the Jubilee: Christian hope. But not a soft or sentimental optimism, he insisted. True hope, he said, is capable of passing through the fires of history—its wars, crises, injustices, and confusion—without dissolving into either denial or despair. “Hope does not ignore the suffering of the world,” he said, “but faces it with a confidence grounded in God’s faithful love.”
Between Flight and Resignation
The cardinal contrasted two spiritual temptations: the impulse to flee from the world’s wounds, and the paralysis of resignation. Both, he said, imprison the heart. Between them lies the same rhythm as the opening and closing of the Holy Door: to retreat inward, and to go forth transformed. Within that movement, memory of “a mercy that is not consumed” endures—a mercy, he said, that is “a salvation already given” and yet still unfolding in time.
As rays of light glinted off the statue of St. Paul standing sentinel in the basilica’s courtyard, the words inscribed above the door seemed to echo his homily: Spes unica—“Our only hope.” For Harvey, that hope was embodied in the Cross, “the only hope that blooms in the new life of the resurrection.”
A Silence Full of Meaning
The ceremony of closure unfolded in contemplative stillness. The cardinal approached the monumental door, flanked by sacred panels depicting the Trinitarian theme of mercy, evangelisation, and redemption. Kneeling in prayer, he closed the heavy panels, marking a liturgical end, but not the end of God’s mercy. “The conclusion is in time,” he said, “but God’s mercy is perpetually open.”
It was a gesture steeped in symbol. The Holy Door, he reminded the faithful, remains a passage into “the space of mercy,” a threshold through which pilgrims leave behind what burdens their hearts to enter renewed communion. “God never closes the door to man,” Harvey said. “It is man who is called to pass through it.”
The Pilgrim’s Path of Hope
Throughout his homily, the cardinal wove Scripture and tradition into a tapestry of continuity. St. Paul’s affirmation that “hope does not disappoint” resounded with fresh relevance. Like the apostle who endured persecution and apparent failure, believers, Harvey suggested, are called to a hope grounded not in human endurance but in divine fidelity.
He recalled how both Pope Francis and his successor, Pope Leo XIV, had urged Christians to find courage to “go deep,” to break through what he called the “crust of resignation.” Hope, Harvey said, is not an escape from reality but the strength to descend into its depths, confident that “no prison can extinguish the inner freedom of those who live in Christ.”
Anchored in Divine Promise
Harvey’s reflections revisited the great theological lineage of hope, citing Pope Benedict XVI’s Spe salvi, which portrays humanity’s many hopes—large and small—as rays converging in the one great Light of God. It is this love, Harvey said, that sustains faithfulness amid imperfection and guarantees the “life that is truly life.”
To pass through the Holy Door, then, is to commit to living that truth in ordinary time. Every pilgrim, Harvey said, carries the responsibility of being a “humble but luminous sign of God’s presence” in a divided and uncertain world.
Doors That Remain Open
As the final prayers quieted within the basilica dedicated to the Apostle of the Gentiles, Harvey turned once more to the gathered assembly. “As this Holy Door closes,” he said, “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.”
St. Paul’s was the third of the papal basilicas to close its Holy Door this Jubilee season, following St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran. The final act of closure, at St. Peter’s Basilica, will take place on January 6, the Solemnity of the Epiphany, when Pope Leo XIV will bring the Holy Year to its liturgical conclusion.
Yet, as the cardinal reminded the faithful, the meaning of the Jubilee endures not in a sealed threshold of marble and bronze, but in the unbarred hearts of believers—doors that, once opened by mercy, are never truly closed.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican News
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