Easter

April 4, 2018

The Gospels and the Book of Revelation provide us with so many beautiful ways into the mystery of the Resurrection: the upper room appearances, the sea and the catch of fish, Jesus’ wounds, the stranger walking beside us suddenly revealed in the breaking of the bread, the figure among the golden lampstands, the one with eyes like fire and a voice like the sound of many waters, he who stands at the door and knocks—and so many others. To me one of the most beautiful and meaningful is the garden: Jesus agonizing, dying, buried, risen and appearing in a garden. This symbol is particularly accentuated in the Gospel of John where we see Jesus leaving the Last Supper going forth “with his disciples across the Kidron valley, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place; for Jesus often met there with his disciples.” By often meeting with his disciples here, Jesus seems to have been preparing them—and us-- to return to life in the garden.

The garden has a long history. Once upon a time, the very beginning of time, there was a garden, sometimes called Paradise, where God lived with the man and the woman in peace and innocence. We know the sad story of that garden from which humans were barred, losing access to intimate life with God. Jesus, who came to restore our access to the Father through himself, was the only one able to open those barred doors, but at no little cost to himself.

First he entered the Garden of Gethsemani on Mount Olivet, a garden filled with the briars and brambles of desolation, anguish and fear as he faced death, and not only death but death on a cross. He who was the pioneer of our faith went before us on a path that had become overgrown with all sorts of obstacles, a path barely visible to the eyes of the human heart, and yet still so desirable as the only path leading to our true selves and our true home. For the joy that lay ahead of him, the joy of bringing us home with himself to the Father, he determined in the Garden of Gethsemani to remain on this path and proceeded steadfastly to the Garden of Calvary. As John tells us, “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden.” It was in this garden where he endured the cross, despising the shame of it, that he opened forever to us the barred gates to life with God in union with himself. It was also in this garden that he was buried by Joseph and Nicodemus who took the body of Jesus and placed it in a new tomb that was in the garden. And so naturally on the day of his Resurrection he would be taken as the gardener walking about his garden. And indeed he was the gardener, our very own gardener, planting us, nurturing us, watching over us, granting us growth, calling us each by name and thus setting us free to be who we were meant to be.

Our Father John of Forde seems to have had a great love and understanding for the mystery and symbol of the gardens, especially evident in Sermon 119. There he describes Gethsemani as the garden of Christ’s meekness, Calvary as the garden of his obedience, patience, humility and charity, and his burial place as the garden of his rest and of his rising in glory. All of these gardens we experience intimately in our own life of prayer and all of them are essential. All hold for us secret joys and sorrows and profound lessons. As John of Forde puts it, “So Christ’s beloved has very pleasant gardens, where she is accustomed to dwell, by his gracious will, and she can have a lovely variety of joy by walking within the garden of her choice…A soul is very blessed who has the good fortune to possess such diverse and lovely dwellings. Whether she turns aside to one or the other, everywhere in these gardens the Gardener comes to meet her. She can seek for nothing else and she is content to find nothing else. Only Jesus is it desirable to seek, only Jesus is it blessed to find; he alone will be most blessedly possessed at the end that has no end, Jesus, the only Son of the Father, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, God for ever and ever. Amen.”

May we each be so faithful in dwelling in these gardens and in entering each particular garden as his call inspires and draws us, that we may eventually be blessed to hear those words of Jesus addressed to us: “You are a garden enclosed, my sister, my promised bride, a garden enclosed…I come into my garden.”