Our human story begins in a garden. Genesis describes God placing Adam in “a paradise of pleasure” full of trees bearing wholesome and delicious fruit. In the midst of this paradise were two trees of special and mysterious significance – the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was, of course, through disobeying God’s instructions and eating the fruit of the latter that our first parents fell from grace and found themselves cast out from that wondrous garden where they had enjoyed the privilege of walking and conversing in friendship with their Creator. To bar their return Cherubim were posted behind them, along with a flaming sword turning in all directions. Separated from paradise, they would also come to suffer the separation of body and soul in death, as a punishment for their rebellion. During their departure from this garden, God hints that there is an antidote to the curse that they have brought upon the human race: the purpose of the angelic sentries and the swirling sword is to keep man away from the Tree of Life, “lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life and live forever” (Gen 3:22). Let this be a warning to today’s “transhumanists” who delude themselves into thinking that science and technology will endow them with divine capabilities: restoration to eternal life is attainable with God’s help, but man will never be allowed to achieve it on his own terms.
Excluded from the garden of paradise, Adam and his descendants must till the ground in toil and by the sweat of their brow, contending with thorns and thistles. Anyone who has created a garden will know how much time, thought, painstaking labour and resources are involved in such a project. Nevertheless, gardens of all shapes and sizes have been a mark of every civilisation. The Oratory Fathers are blessed with a garden of their own, which was part of the plot which they acquired along with their purchase of an old school, Blemell House, in the early 1850s. An engraved boundary stone in the wall indicates that our garden dates back to at least 1786, and in recent dry summers the traces of a previous layout have made a ghostly and temporary appearance through the parched lawn. One consequence of Adam and Eve’s transgression in Eden is the tiresome Massaria disease which attacks the branches of the plane trees planted by Father Faber, and which costs us a small fortune annually in fees for the arboreal surgery required to keep the garden safe for scouts, choir members and the patrons of our annual Summer Fete.
Following man’s expulsion from Eden, gardens continue to feature throughout the Holy Scriptures as a recurring theme in God’s plan for redemption. On Maundy Thursday, after the Mass of the Last Supper, we accompany Our Lord into Gethsemane, where He endured the first stage of His Passion. It is said that the ancient olive trees that grow in the area of Jerusalem identified as Gethsemane today draw their nutrition from ground that was moistened by the blood He sweated during His agony. The flowers at the Altar of Repose in St Wilfrid’s Chapel each year serve to evoke the ambience of a garden as we keep vigil before the Blessed Sacrament. On Good Friday we are then reminded in St John’s account of the Passion that “there was in the place where he was crucified a garden”, and that it was there that His body was enclosed in an unused tomb.
And so Our Lord’s definitive triumph over the calamity that occurred in the Garden of Eden also takes place in a garden. The shadow of death that crossed man’s path in that primeval paradise of pleasure, and the blood that soaked the ground of Gethsemane, give way to sweetness and freshness in the garden of the Resurrection. Arriving here in the early hours of the first Easter Sunday St Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Second Adam for a gardener. The first Adam, after all, was put into the paradise of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Gen 2:15). The Cross on which Our Saviour died has become the Tree of Life, whereby man may attain the immortality that was forfeited in that first garden. We are mystically grafted on to the Tree of Life in Baptism, the primary sacramental means by which we die and are buried with Christ, emerging from the waters of regeneration filled with the supernatural life of the Resurrection.
Easter is a feast overflowing with the vitality of a spring garden bursting into a new cycle of life and growth, and if we wish to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of that marvellous day of our salvation during this beautiful season of Eastertide, then perhaps we should make some effort to immerse ourselves in the cool air of a garden in its early morning lustre. Many of the public parks of London contain areas of cultivated garden which are verdant sanctuaries of tranquillity at this time of year. Breathe deeply the fragrant air and give thanks for the discovery of the empty tomb in that garden in Jerusalem, meditate on the Resurrection and what it means for us.
Father Julian Large