On a pilgrimage to Rome during this Jubilee Year of Hope, the experience of walking through holy doors transformed my thinking about doors in general. I began to focus less on their physicality and more on their purpose as a passage to a place beyond.

My journey began with an invitation to be part of a pilgrimage to Rome in May with a small group of Christ Child Society members and friends. The Christ Child Society, founded in 1887 in Washington, D.C., by Servant of God Mary Virginia Merrick, is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children and families in need. Its 5,000 members in 19 states plus the District of Columbia, provide a passionate, volunteer work force that, among other things, operates school libraries and works with children in pre-schools. The group provides books, clothing, diapers, hygiene items, car seats and “My Stuff” bags (sometimes the only thing children can call their own).

As a member of the Cleveland Chapter of the Christ Child Society for over 20 years and as a prior member of the national board, I knew the organization’s mission and its people. My immediate response to the call to a pilgrimage was “yes.”

During the pilgrimage, I began to realize that my own personal experience with the Christ Child Society had placed me at many metaphorical doors, one of which was especially powerful and transformative. I joined the society so that I could help children in the Cleveland area. Early in my work, I had a life-changing experience that expanded the way I “see.”

I was co-chair of our school uniform program, and one of my responsibilities was to record the name, school and size of each child who would be receiving a uniform. At that time, social workers provided the information on physical cards that were delivered to the Christ Child Society through the mail. On a very hot July evening, sitting with hundreds of cards, I began recording the information. I wondered about these children and what their lives were like, in particular one child whose name was identical to my daughter’s. The children we served were not just names on a card. They had faces and personalities. From that moment forward, I began to see “beyond.”

No longer did I see our relationship as “giver and receiver.” Instead, I began to see co-equals on the journey of life, each with needs to be filled and each with gifts to be shared. The experience became a door facilitating passage to a place of increased humility: a place more reflective of an encounter with the Christ Child.

Perhaps my own inner quest to experience more of these doors is what grounded my immediate yes to the pilgrimage invitation: a jubilee year, a passage through the holy doors, journey and movement beyond. I could not resist.

And the pilgrimage did not disappoint. Each person walking through the holy doors is personally invited to cross over the threshold, to feel a sense of belonging to something far greater than the material world can provide. And in my experience, that “something greater” is often a togetherness, a unity on some level, like the unity I felt with the students reflected on those uniform information cards. Division falls away, and I begin to see that we belong together.

I felt that sense of belonging together again at St. Peter’s Square during Pope Leo XIV’s Wednesday general audience (only the second of his new papacy). We heard the pope speak in many languages. But when he spoke in English, clearly as an American, the priest on our pilgrimage who was sitting next to me, Father Ralph O’Donnell (now Bishop O’Donnell), began to wipe away tears. He said that when he heard an American pope speaking his language, he also heard Jesus’ voice: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:27).

Father Ralph heard Jesus’ voice at that moment—and through Father Ralph, I heard it, too. Another unity: Jesus, the pope, Father Ralph and myself brought together through 2,000 years to a moving experience at this exact place and time; Jesus, the door to new life—then and now.

At the Basilica of St. Augustine, I saw Caravaggio’s “Madonna of the Pilgrims” (also known as “Madonna di Loreto”) for the first time. Mary’s tilted head and the Christ Child’s extended arm point to the kneeling pilgrims whose gazes point back to the mother and child. It is a genuine “seeing” and acknowledgment of the other.

But what became significant to me was the fact that Caravaggio placed mother and child in the doorway. It is a beautiful symbol: a permanent invitation and welcome to an encounter at the threshold of new life.

Doors were meaningful to me not only inside the large basilicas and churches that were bursting with artwork, but also in unassuming entryways. These included an entryway near the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran leading to a small grotto-like space under the Holy Stairs (believed to be the stairs Jesus climbed to reach Pontius Pilate). There, when Father Ralph celebrated Mass with our small group, I felt community far beyond the physical room.

One part of the grotto included the original wall that Emperor Constantine’s mother St. Helena brought from the Holy Land to Rome in approximately A.D. 325. When laying a hand on that wall, I felt connected to those who worked to make the life of Jesus known during the early days of the church. And during Mass I felt a significant connection to Jesus, who is with us always and everywhere—in Bernini’s ornate high altar in St. Peter’s Basilica as well as in the modest and simple altar housed in this grotto-like space.

The individuals in our group also became, for me, pathways to community. We were from different Christ Child chapters (Omaha, Phoenix and Cleveland); we were from different walks of life with different life experiences and different personalities; and our group included lay and religious alike.

Before I left for Rome, I knew only one of the people in our group. By the end of the week, I felt as though I had known them all my life, a testament to their open hearts and welcome.

A desire to more deeply experience what the life of Christ teaches us brought us all together on this pilgrimage to Rome. It is also what brings 5,000 Christ Child Society members together to partner with hundreds of agencies, schools, hospitals and social service organizations to fill needs and bestow dignity. The Christ Child Society is a passage through which children and their families are welcomed, invited in and strengthened. It is a door whose threshold takes us to a place of community. Society members and friends were for me a perfect accompaniment on a pilgrimage in this 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.

Susan Ferraro Smith is a writer and retired attorney.