“Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning” (Jn 20:1). She comes to a garden. We know from the last words of the Passion read on Good Friday that the tomb of Our Lord was in a garden (cf. Jn 19:41). This is not an unimportant detail, because salvation history can be understood as a story of gardens.
We find three essential elements in a garden: order, beauty and life. Order sets a garden apart from the wilderness. Its boundaries and design designate it as a specific place unlike any other. Second, a garden has beauty — a diversity of flowers and plants, colors, sizes and shapes that pleases the eye. Finally, a garden has life. Plants grow and bear fruit, and animals find their territory a pleasing place to live.
By his sin Adam rejected the Gardener and lost the goods of the garden. We have lost order, beauty and life. Rebellion against God has thrown His creation into disarray. We now find soul pitted against body, man against woman, and all of creation at odds with man. It has brought the ugliness and horror of sin into the world. Most of all, it brought death into the world, death in place of life.
In a second garden Our Lord began the restoration, the redemption: “Jesus went … to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered” (Jn 18:1). He entered the Garden of Gethsemane to undo the rebellion of the Garden of Eden. In that garden He took upon Himself all the disorder, ugliness, and death that sin brought into the world. The entirety of it rushed upon and into Him. “He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground” (Lk 22:44). He who is beauty itself became the man of sorrows. He who knew no sin became sin for us (cf. 2 Cor 5:21). Life itself became death.
In a third garden Our Lord continues His work — by rising from the dead. How fitting that His tomb should be in a garden — to complete the restoration of God’s original plan. Indeed, when she first sees Him Mary Magdalene takes Our Lord to be the gardener (cf. Jn 20:15). And in a certain sense, He is. He rises as the divine Gardener, to restore order, beauty and life.
He completes His work in a fourth garden: the human soul. He desires to enter our souls by His grace and dwell within as the divine Gardener. He desires to reestablish within us His gifts of order, beauty and life intended from the beginning. Order, to heal that division and discord within us that produces all the division and discord outside of us. Beauty, to rid us of the ugliness of sin and grant us the glory of His children. And life, that our hearts become lively and life-giving.
On Easter Mary Magdalene found Him in a garden. He rose in a garden so that we can in turn find Him within us, establishing His new garden of grace.
Fr. Scalia is pastor of St. John the Beloved Parish in McLean.