Ambrose of Milan : 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? — LETTER 44 Augustine of Hippo ((as quoted by Aquinas, AD 1274)) : What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that 'no man shall pass through it,' save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this - 'The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it' - except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this—'it shall be shut for evermore' - but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth? — De Annunt. Dom. iii Cyril of Alexandria : The word was made flesh without sexual intercourse, being conceived altogether without seed; then he was born without injury to her virginity. — COMMENTARY ON Luke 1 Jerome : For before the Savior assumed a human body and humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, the Law and the Prophets, and all the knowledge of the Scriptures, were closed, and paradise was closed. But after he hung on the cross, and spoke to the thief, 'Today you will be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43), immediately the veil of the temple was torn, and everything was opened; and with the veil removed, we say: But we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). — Commentary on Ezekiel Jerome : Some understand beautifully that the closed gate through which only the Lord God of Israel enters, and the leader to whom the gate is closed, to be the Virgin Mary, who both before childbirth and after childbirth remained a virgin. Indeed, at the time when the angel spoke: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus (Luke 1:35), and when he was born, the virgin remained eternal; to confound those who claim that after the birth of the Savior, she had other sons by Joseph, based on the occasion of his brothers who are mentioned in the Gospel. — Commentary on Ezekiel Jerome : 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. — HOMILIES ON THE Psalms 19 (Psalms 89) Origen of Alexandria : The Lord God, maker of the universe, enters and departs through one gate, made from sensible material and always closed. — HOMILIES ON Ezekiel 14:1 Origen of Alexandria : There is a key of knowledge to open what is closed. — HOMILIES ON Ezekiel 14:2 Origen of Alexandria : Even though my God has not come, the law was closed, the prophetic word closed, the text of the Old Testament veiled. — HOMILIES ON Ezekiel 14:2 Theodoret of Cyrus : 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. — Commentary on Ezekiel 16.44