Cardinal Donald Wuerl will celebrate two Masses in the Archdiocese of Washington Dec. 7 and 8 where he will open Holy Doors to usher in the start of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. 

The cardinal will open a Holy Door at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle during a Vigil Mass Dec. 7 at 5:30 p.m. The next day, Dec. 8 at noon, he will open a Holy Door during a Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Both Masses are for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a holy day of obligation for Catholics.

Pope Francis will open a Holy Door at the Vatican on Dec. 8. In announcing the Year of Mercy, the Holy Father said, “I will have the joy of opening the Holy Door … the Holy Door will become a Door of Mercy through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons, and instills hope.”

The particularly Catholic tradition of a Holy Door for jubilee years dates back to the Middle Ages. The door was seen as a passage toward salvation and an entrance to a new path of eternal life in Christ. 

In Misericordiae Vultus (“The Face of Mercy”), the document in which he called for the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis said the Holy Door represents “the bridge that connects God and humanity, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness."

“We shall cross the threshold of the Holy Door fully confident that the strength of the risen Lord, who constantly supports us on our pilgrim way, will sustain us,” Pope Francis said in his document announcing the Holy Year.

In his bull Incarnationis Mysterium, St. John Paul II stated that the Holy Door “…evokes the passage from sin to grace which every Christian is called to accomplish. “

During a Holy Year, it is traditional for Catholics to make a pilgrimage to and enter through the Holy Doors in Rome or in their dioceses. In passing through the Holy Door, pilgrims affirm that Christ identified Himself as “the door.”  (John 10:6-10) 

Earlier this year at a Mass at which the National Shrine’s Holy Door was sealed, Msgr. Walter R. Rossi, the basilica’s rector, noted that a Holy Door is “a symbol of Jesus Christ, the true gate of heaven and the door to salvation.”

The rector said that during the Year of Mercy, "the Holy Door of this basilica will be opened as an invitation to all who visit this shrine, to open their lives to the Divine Mercy, which Jesus bestows upon those who place their trust in Him.”

Pope Francis has also attached indulgences to those who make a pilgrimage to a Holy Door.

In a letter last September to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, the Holy Father declared that an indulgence would be granted to the faithful who “make a brief pilgrimage to the Holy Door, open in every cathedral or in the churches designated by the diocesan bishop.”

“It is important that this moment be linked, first and foremost, to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist with a reflection on mercy,” the pope wrote. “It will be necessary to accompany these celebrations with the profession of faith and with prayer for me and for the intentions that I bear in my heart for the good of the Church and of the entire world.”