Ianua caeli is an invocation of the Litany of Loreto. Its language comes from the Church's oldest Marian hymnody — the Ave maris stella calls her felix caeli porta, the happy gate of heaven, and the antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater greets her as the gate by which heaven is entered — and behind that from the Fathers' reading of the closed gate of Ezekiel 44:2, through which the Lord alone passes, as a figure of her virginity.

Christ says of himself, I am the door (John 10:9), and the title never competes with that. Mary is a gate in a derived sense: the way by which the Word came to us in the flesh, and the mother whose prayer accompanies the Church on its way back to him. Read this way the invocation is a compact statement of the Incarnation — God really entered our history through a particular woman's consent — and of Christian hope, that the road he opened is open still.

Universal Church

Medieval and Renaissance art gives the title an architectural form: Mary framed within a doorway or archway, the Virgin of the enclosed garden with its gate, and the great Marian portals of cathedrals through which the faithful literally walk to enter the church.

• Ianua Caeli
• Janua Caeli
• Gate of Heaven

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• salve-regina

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• hail-mary