Search
Gardens, Crowns & Crosses
-
April 4, 2023Holy Week is upon us. How did your Lent go? With the Easter Triduum, the three most holy days for Christians-- Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday-- beginning tomorrow, I thought it would be timely to share a short reflection on the significance of gardens, crowns, and crosses. Not just any, but those we hear about during this rich season leading up to Easter.
Recently, while praying with the Scripture passages associated with the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, and having the creation accounts fresh on my mind, I was struck by the imagery of the two gardens presented in the Bible. On one hand, we have the Garden of Eden at the time of creation with everything good God made there, including human beings. On the other we have juxtaposed the Garden of Gethsemane. Here we witness Jesus’ agony as he prays and comes to terms with what He must do to redeem humanity from the effects of what happened in that first garden. It’s almost as if he’s returning to the scene of the crime.
In the Gospel of John, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him… in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The Word (Jesus) was present at the time of creation in the Garden of Eden and he was surely present also at the fall, when Adam and Eve are cast out of Paradise. While Jesus was not in the flesh at that moment in time, I can imagine the Word down on his knees praying, trying to make sense of what just happened and what he must do now, to reconcile humanity to the Father. This creature of which God said, “let us make man in our own image, in our image and likeness let us make them male and female”, and who were very good, chose to disobey God and follow the serpent.
The serpent, called the most cunning of all the creatures in scripture, brings into focus the lie that led Adam and Eve and all of humanity to lose the crowns given to them by God as children of the King. The serpent’s deception was to fool our first parents into thinking God was holding something back, when in fact, God had already given them everything. Toiling in the soil full of thorns and thistles became Adam’s fate while the woman’s would be to endure pain in childbirth. A world of trouble descended upon this first married couple, trouble we still experience to this day. A crown made of thorns becomes our Lord’s symbol of a restored royalty for humanity borne out of his own pain and suffering.
And what about that famous tree? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil at the center of the creation story, that tree God told Adam and Eve to stay away from, but didn’t? Well, it too makes a return appearance, in a way, at the time of our redemption. Jesus is made to carry that tree on his bleeding and bruised back, all the way up a hill in Calvary. The wood of a tree, a cross, becomes a tool for our salvation. Out of love for the creatures, Jesus makes of himself an offering to be nailed to a tree. The cross, a gross instrument of execution during Jesus’ time, becomes a symbol of the lengths God will go, to walk in the Garden once again with his creatures—woman and man.
Everything and everyone in the world is redeemed by the power of God, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and by Jesus’ magnificent salvific work on the cross. Yet we have to beware. That cunning serpent continues to lie, and lures us away from God and Paradise. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; protect us from the wickedness and snares of the devil…you know the rest.
Amen.
Photo by Tere Johnson
The Shrine of Christ's Passion
St. John, Indiana
