House of God & Gate of Heaven

“Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children.”  These words are taken from the Old Testament Lesson we read in today’s Mass of the Immaculate Conception.  But even though they were written many years before Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother St. Anne, they nevertheless represent the words our blessed Mother would say to us today.  She commands us, “Hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways.  Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.  Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.”

Our Lady instructs us that if we want to find eternal happiness, if we want to be “blessed”, we must keep her ways.  Her ways are the ways of humility, obedience, compassion, and constant submission to the will of God, and we must make these ways our ways if we are to achieve our heavenly goal.  So let us hear and follow the instructions of our Mother, and blessed we shall truly be.

So what exactly are her instructions?  “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.”  This exhortation to her children, to watch daily at her gates and wait at the posts of her doors, is our Lady’s motherly way of asking that we honor her with our daily prayers, and seek her intercession.  “For never was it known that anyone who fled to her protection, implored her help, or sought her intercession, was left unaided.”  But the symbolism of watching at her gates and waiting at the posts of her doors goes far deeper than this.  These gates and doors are like any other gates and doors, in as much as they are passageways, portals taking us out of one place and into another.  In this case, they are the Gates of Heaven and doorway to the House of God.  They take us from this world to the next.

In the Rosary, we are asked to follow our Lady both on the joyful road to Bethlehem and on the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful road, to Calvary.  In the glorious mysteries, we follow her again in her Assumption, through the Gate of Heaven and into the House of God forever.  In the Antiphon to our Lady sung during Advent, the Alma Redemptoris Mater, we address our Lady in these words, Pervia Caeli porta manes, “Thou dost remain the Gate of Heaven through whom we pass.”  If we watch daily at her gates and wait at her door, we are as close to heaven as we can be.  We stand not at a wall, but at a gate, a door, and when we are invited to pass through, heaven is right there on the other side.

And when we follow her into the House of God, there we will see her, transformed as the Blessed Queen of Heaven.  After all, from the moment of her Fiat in Nazareth until she gave birth to the Christ Child in Bethlehem, our Lady was that House of God, the dwelling place and tabernacle of the Most High.  We can never be lost if we follow our Lady, because she always leads us home to Christ.

To find both our Lady and her divine Son we must watch at her gate and wait at the posts of her doors.  She is herself that Gate of Heaven, and only through her intercession may we pass through into glory.  If she is the door to glory it is the mysteries of the Rosary that are the posts of that door.  We are told to wait daily at these posts, saying our Rosary, meditating on the mysteries at these doorposts of Redemption.  For it is these mysteries that prepare us to pass through those doors into the House of God and into the eternal mysteries of the Beatific Vision.  They prepare us by strengthening our faith in the truths of the Redemption story and by strengthening our hope for that Redemption.  So if you want to find our Lady and her Son, pray the Rosary.  “For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.”