Archaeology has discovered during the time of Christ planting pots with pollen in them, which tends to be well preserved in arid environments. These growing pots were then transferred to gardens.1
Easter is revealed in returning to gardens!
1. The meaning of paradise is a garden, from the Latin paradisus meaning park, orchard, the Garden of Eden, but as used by the Persians, paradise means a walled garden.2
A place of fertility, beauty, usefulness, delight and enjoyment.
Yet, there was a Death Warning in the Garden of Eden.
The idea that it was an apple that caused the fall of the human race is because in Latin, apple is “malum” and “malum” is also the Latin word for “evil.” And like Eve, I bite into the apple offered to me, and try to use my own resources to come up with a solution and how miserably I fail.3
Easter is the time of second chances.
Returning to Eden means discovering the source of our immortality in Jesus Christ because at Easter the barrier of sin is now rolled away.
The prayer used by priests when putting on the stole is: “Lord, restore the stole of immortality which I lost through the collusion of our first parents, and unworthy as I am to approach thy sacred mysteries, may I yet gain eternal joy.”
What fruit are we eating?
No longer the fruit of sin but now the fruit of Mary’s womb, Jesus, who says, by eating my body and drinking my blood, sacramentally, in the Eucharist, there will be life in you and I will raise you up.
I don’t seek Jesus from the world, I find Him in the Eucharist. One lady on her way to become a Catholic Christian said, “I knew only a few things to be true: I believed in God and I believed in the Eucharist. I kept those truths close to my heart and slowly began to see the rest.4
2. The second Easter Garden is the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means “olive press,” where Jesus often prayed around the olive trees.
Gethsemane is where we get our fortifying prayer.
Returning to Gethsemane can be encapsulated in a word the Germans have to describe a particular feeling that’s been lingering within many of us in these times. They call it weltschmerz, while the French refer to it as the mal du siècle to describe a very familiar feeling: a melancholy and an ache when we realize the world is not as it should be—that selfishness and greed pervade the nations, that humans are capable of indescribable acts of violence against each other.5
There, in that garden, Jesus took all that is wrong in this sinful world upon himself.
However, Easter tells us that God's future has invaded our present times. Romans 8:28 promises us: “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
Yet, as Daphne McKibben, a wife and mother of four children shared, “When you’ve just made funeral arrangements, seen your son in a casket and kissed his face for the last time, and are about to bury him in the ground, telling a mom that it’s all going to work together for good is not a comfort.
How could anything good ever, ever, EVER come from the death of my precious son, Larry?
But then she said: It’s not about me! It’s all about God.
I lost so many things when I lost Larry, and all the things that I lost were good. But somehow, that’s what had to happen in my life to bring God glory. God chose it for His purpose. Nothing is ever going to come along and replace Larry.
Larry’s life had purpose and so did his death, and I’m glad I can finally say that, even if I don’t really understand it all, I know God is glorified through it. It’s only through His continued grace toward me that I can put my grief behind me and walk toward a life of joy.6
Some say there were Easter lilies growing in the Garden of Gethsemane as lilies can be found mentioned prominently in the Bible. (Hosea 14:5; Luke 12:2).
No matter what happens, with Easter, hope springs eternal with Jesus’ resurrection and our promise of immortality for those who love Christ.
3. Lastly, John Chapter 19 describes the third garden of Easter: the garden of victory!
Mary Magdalen came to the tomb early while it was still dark.
A lady said: This Easter, I will seek out another Vigil service where I can sit in the dark with my candle and be like Mary Magdalene, waiting at the empty tomb and listening for Jesus to call my name and say again: “I am alive!” 7
That happened last night at the Easter Vigil! It begins in a darkened church where we hold lighted candles.
Saint Francis de Sales said, “At the very thought of God, one immediately feels a certain delightful emotion of the heart, which testifies that God is God of the human heart.” Far from a mental construct, it is a recognition, filled with awe and gratitude, of God’s self-manifestation.
Returning to the Victory Garden means returning to Galilee as Matthew 28:10 tells us.
Galilee is the place where everything began. There Jesus had called the apostles when they were fishermen. To return to Galilee means to reread everything on the basis of the cross and its victory, fearlessly: ‘Do not be afraid.’ To reread everything – Jesus’s preaching, his miracles, the new community, the excitement and the defections, even the betrayal –from the perspective and power of Easter, which is a new beginning.
For each of us, 'Go to Galilee' means rediscovering our baptism as a living spring, drawing new energy from the sources of our faith and our Christian experience.8
Easter is the power of the Risen Jesus that knows no bounds to be believed, taught and preached as the Good News of the Gospel.
Easter is paradise unleashed… with the promise of Isaiah 58:11: The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring!
[now, renewal of baptismal promises]
1. Dafna Langgut and Kathyrn Gleason, Identification of the Miniaturized Garden of King Herod The Great: The Fossil Pollen Evidence, Strata: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 2020 Volume 38
2. Grace, at Wordfoolery
3. Robert Clements, Still Biting Eve’s Apple?, Bob’s banter, blog
4. Jessica Mian’s Eucharistic Witness, Catholic Church of the Ascension, website
5. Chine McDonald, World Weary in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christianity Today, 02/06/2023
6. Making Sense of Romans 8:28, The Testimony of a Bereaved Mother, Amanda Criss, blog
7. Heidi Havercamp, Resurrection of the Lord, The Christian Century, Apr 2023
8. Brian Purfield, Return to Galilee, Thinking Faith, Jesuit blog, 03/29/2018
