Three Gates on Every Side: The Nations Gathered from the Four Winds
Old Testament: Isaias 43:5-6
Fear not, for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north: Give up: and to the south: Keep not back: bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.
Old Testament, also: Ezechiel 48:31, 35
And the gates of the city according to the names of the tribes of Israel, three gates on the north side, the gate of Ruben one, the gate of Juda one, the gate of Levi one. ... Its circumference was eighteen thousand: and the name of the city from that day, The Lord is there.
New Testament: Matthew 2:1; Luke 13:29; Apocalypse 21:13
When Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. ... And there shall come from the east and the west, and the north and the south; and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. ... On the east, three gates: and on the north, three gates: and on the south, three gates: and on the west, three gates.
The connection
Isaias hears God call His scattered people home from all four quarters: "I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north: Give up: and to the south: Keep not back" (Isaias 43:5-6). Ezechiel sees the city they come home to. It has three gates on each of its four sides, named for the tribes of Israel, "and the name of the city from that day, The Lord is there" (Ezechiel 48:31-35). The Gospel fulfils the call in three steps. At the birth, the first come: "there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem" (Matthew 2:1), Gentiles at the cradle. In the ministry, at the faith of a Gentile centurion, Christ opens it to all: "many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob" (Matthew 8:11), and St Luke gives all four quarters: "from the east and the west, and the north and the south" (Luke 13:29). At the end, St John sees Ezechiel's city come down from heaven: "On the east, three gates: and on the north, three gates: and on the south, three gates: and on the west, three gates" (Apocalypse 21:13), with the names of the twelve tribes on the gates and of the twelve apostles on the foundations (21:12, 14). St Leo the Great sees the whole ingathering in the Magi: "In the three Magi let all people worship the Author of the universe: and let God be known not in Judæa alone, but in all the world." St Augustine reads the gates: the Church is called "from all those four winds", and called "in the Trinity", by Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, "four then being thrice taken, twelve are found." The Catechism calls the Magi the first-fruits of the nations, who find their place in the family of the patriarchs (CCC 528).
Moral sense
The city has a gate facing every direction, so there is no quarter from which a soul cannot come. The Catena Aurea gives a reading of Christ's east and west: "he comes from the east who has served God from a child; he from the west who in decrepit age has turned to God." The Magi came early and far, by a star, and "went back another way into their country" (Matthew 2:12). The gates stand open on every side, and St Augustine says how the Church calls souls through them: by Baptism, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Anagogical sense
Isaias's call and Ezechiel's gates end in the city whose name is The Lord is there. "The gates thereof shall not be shut by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it" (Apocalypse 21:25-26). The wise men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to a child in a house; at the end every nation brings its glory to the Lamb in the city, and those who came from the four winds sit down together at one table in the kingdom of God.
The Fathers
St Augustine, on Psalm 86 (87 in Schaff): "There are four quarters of the globe: East, West, North, and South: and they are constantly alluded to in the Scriptures. From all those four winds; our Lord declares in the Gospel that He will call his sheep 'from the four winds;' therefore from all those four winds is the Church called. And how called? On every side it is called in the Trinity: no otherwise is it called than by Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: four then being thrice taken, twelve are found." St Leo the Great, On the Feast of the Epiphany III: "In the three Magi let all people worship the Author of the universe: and let God be known not in Judæa alone, but in all the world." St Augustine, in the Catena Aurea on Matthew 8:11: "He says, not 'all,' but many; yet these from the east and west; for by these two quarters the whole world is intended."
Warrant
Patristic because St Augustine reads the twelve gates as the Church called from the four winds in the Trinity (on Psalm 86, numbered 87 in the Schaff edition), and St Leo the Great reads the Magi as all the nations worshipping in their person (On the Feast of the Epiphany III), a reading the Catechism takes up at CCC 528. Apocalypse 21:12-13 plainly draws on Ezechiel 48:31-34, twelve gates named for the tribes, three to each side, but names no earlier text, and no New Testament verse cites Isaias 43:5-6; setting the Magi, Luke 13:29 and the gates in one line is the entry's own arrangement of what the Fathers read piece by piece. Checked in the Greek: apo anatolon, from the east, is the same phrase at Isaias 43:5 in the Septuagint, at Matthew 2:1 and at Luke 13:29, and dysme and borras, west and north, are shared by Isaias 43:5-6 and Luke 13:29; for the south the Septuagint has lips and St Luke notos. Ezechiel's gates are pylai in the Septuagint, and St John's are pylones, a word for a gateway or gatehouse. The line from the Catena is given there to Haymo; it is quoted beside St Augustine's comment and is not his.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 528.
The verses
Isaias 43:5 · Isaias 43:6 · Ezechiel 48:31 · Ezechiel 48:35 · Matthew 2:1 · Luke 13:29 · Apocalypse 21:13
