The Lord God, maker of the universe, enters and departs through one gate, made from sensible material and always closed.

There is a key of knowledge to open what is closed.

Even though my God has not come, the law was closed, the prophetic word closed, the text of the Old Testament veiled.

Before the Savior took a human body and humbled himself, the law and the prophets and all knowledge of Scriptures were closed, and so paradise was as well.

Some people nobly understand the Virgin Mary as the door that is closed, who before and after birth remained a virgin, through which only the Lord God of Israel enters.

It is very likely that these words refer to the womb of the Virgin, through which no one enters and from which no one departs other than the only one who is the Lord.

What is that gate of the sanctuary, that outer gate facing the east and remaining closed? Is not Mary the gate through whom the Redeemer entered this world?

Could it be possible that in that entrance there were both seven steps and eight? Just notice what he says: the east gate, the gate from which the light enters—our Lord and Savior. There is indeed a gate, and no one enters it except the high priest. And what does holy Scripture say about it? This gate is to remain closed; it is not opened, moreover, except to the priest. Even so the Covenant, both Old and New, has always been closed; it has not been opened except to the Savior. . . . One gate, then, has both seven steps and eight. In the Old Testament, for example, the divine mysteries point to the Gospels, and in the New Testament back to the law.

The word was made flesh without sexual intercourse, being conceived altogether without seed; then he was born without injury to her virginity.

As the priest does not eat his food in the house or in any other place, except in the Holy of Holies, so does my Savior eat the bread, and no one can eat with him.

Each one of us asks for daily bread and when asking for daily bread does not receive either the same bread or the same measure. So without ceasing, thanks to pure prayers and a clean conscience, in the works of justice, we eat daily bread. And if anyone is less pure, he eats the daily bread in another way.

So great is the goodness and compassion of our sovereign that when he alone sits in the door that is closed and eats in the presence of the Lord, he wants to have more companions to share with him at table. . . . For he alone eats bread before the Lord: he separated from the substance all creatures because he himself has the divine nature. He goes in and out of the same door of the forecourt.

Christ himself is a virgin, and his mother is also a virgin; though she is his mother, she is a virgin still. For Jesus has entered in through the closed doors, and in his tomb—a new one hewn out of the hardest rock—no one is laid either before him or after him. . . . Mary is the east gate, spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel, always shut and always shining and either concealing or revealing the Holy of Holies.

Without seed the Son of God was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and in the Virgin’s womb he formed for himself a fleshly body, animate with a reasonable and intelligent soul. From it [he came] forth in one substance but in two natures, perfect God and perfect man. It preserved undefiled, even after birth, the virginity of her that bore him. Being made of like passions with ourselves in all things, yet without sin, he took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. For, since by sin death entered into the world, he who was to redeem the world had to be without sin, and not by sin subject to death.

What could be said with such evident reference to the inviolate preservation of the Virgin’s condition? That gate of virginity was closed: through it he came forth from the Virgin’s womb into this world; and the virginity was preserved inviolate, and the gate of the Virgin remained closed for ever. Therefore the Holy Spirit is spoken of as the creator of the Lord’s flesh and of his temple.

He is uncircumcised in heart who holds heretical views in his mind and arranges blasphemous assertions against knowledge of Christ in his heart. But he is circumcised in heart who guards the pure faith in sincerity of conscience, about whom it can be said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.^[1]

When the mind is longingly involved with one of these stirrings—this depends on the urgency of the matter at the time of supplication and is the result of great eagerness—the gaze of its stirring is drawn by the eye of faith inside the veil of the heart, and the entries of the soul are fenced off, keeping out alien thoughts, which are called strangers, who are not permitted by the law to enter inside the tent of witness. This is what they describe as an acceptable sacrifice of the heart and pure prayer. Prayer’s boundaries reach this point: afterwards it is not to be named prayer.

How is it that in the book of Ezekiel, where a description is given of the future church and of the heavenly Jerusalem, the priests who have sinned are degraded to the rank of sacristans and doorkeepers, and although they are in the temple of God, that is, on the right hand, they are not among the rams but among the poorest of the sheep?

Certainly no one does more harm in the church than one who has the name and rank of sanctity, while he acts perversely. No one presumes to take him to task when he transgresses, and the offense spreads widely by his for example, when out of respect for his rank the sinner is honored.

Woolen garments are thicker. When the priest approaches the holy ministry, when through compunction he enters within, he must be vested in a finer understanding, as with a linen garment. But when he goes outside to the people, he has to lay aside the garments in which he had ministered within and appear to the people dressed in other clothing, because if he restrains himself in the rigor of his compunction, if he perseveres in the solemnity that he held at the time of prayer, he does not admit to accept the words of external things. And what is the flock to do about necessities if their shepherd refuses to hear and ponder what this present time requires? Therefore a priest who goes out before the people puts on thicker garments in order to compose the habit of his mind for the benefit of his children, even to bear earthly cares. Think, I ask you, dearest brothers, how much toil there is for the watchman, both to extend his heart to the sublime and suddenly to recall it to the depths, and to refine the spirit in the heights of inward understanding and because of the exterior causes of his neighbors, so to speak, suddenly thicken in contemplation.

They are rightly called priests who are set over the faithful for giving them sacred guidance. But hairs outside the head are thoughts in the mind, which, as they spring up without notice above the brain, denote the cares of the present life, which sometimes come forth unseasonably, due to negligent perception, since they arise without our feeling them. Because all who are over others ought indeed to have external anxieties, and yet should not be overly concerned about them, priests are rightly forbidden either to shave their heads or to let their hair grow long. This means that they may neither cut themselves off entirely from thoughts of the flesh for the life of those who are under them, nor again allow such thoughts to occupy them too much.