New Jersey’s moniker of the Garden State has historical elements – from its role providing fruit, vegetables, produce and other agricultural crops to the nascent cities of Philadelphia and New York in earlier periods – and contemporary ones where the state remains one of the world’s largest producers of cranberries and blueberries.
These latter products grow especially well in the sandy soil that some once regarded as pine “barrens,” but which were discovered to be incredibly fertile land for these types of plants. Thus, the title is an apt one even into our day, when industrialization and population density have reconfigured New Jersey, especially along the seemingly interminable and uninviting Turnpike corridor.
Gardens are a recurrent theme in Scripture and the ecclesial imagination of believers, distinct from both crowded urban city sprawls and savage wilderness. In the ancient world, they were oases of cultivated beauty, order and respite, bridging the gap between metropolitan and rural life. Over time, gardens came to represent necessary contact with the natural world and even luxury and magnificence, when one considers Arab, Christian and Asian innovation that consistently reimagined architecture and agriculture as living in symbiotic harmony.
A new book by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, explores the theological, pastoral and spiritual relevance of these unique landscapes. “The Gardens of God” (Word on Fire Publishers, 2023) traces the spiritual elements in the gardens of sin, suffering, victory and paradise. These align with reflections on Eden, Gethsemane, the Empty Tomb and Paradise.
The book closes with a chapter exploring Marian devotion under her exalted title of the Enclosed Garden (Hortus Conclusus), a less familiar reference for many than the Star of the Sea, the Mystical Rose or the Queen of Heaven, but a profoundly intriguing one for that reason all the more. The famous Fra Angelico scene of the Annunciation has Mary in such a space, alluding to both her virgin womb protected perpetually while housing the Savior and her own being “walled off” from sin from her conception.
Originally presented in a series of retreat talks to priests and bishops, Cardinal Roche widens the aperture on ministerial service beyond shepherds, fishermen and spiritual warriors to include their role of fidei cultoribus, or “cultivators of the faith.”
He claims, “A cultor fidei is someone who cultivates faith like a gardener cultivates the land. He is someone who plants a tree in the soil that reaches to the heavens! The word ‘column,’ interestingly, has the same derivation. Classical architecture makes it easy for us to recognise trees in the magnificent columns of Greece and Rome where we see before our eyes stone trunks of trees whose capitals bear the semblance of branches and foliage.”
As the author moves deftly between the important settings of Judeo-Christian history – the expulsion of Adam and Eve, the agony before the Passion, Mary Magdalene’s confusion of the Risen Christ for the gardener – we come to see the wisdom of choosing this thematic organizing principle to deepen our contemplation of these familiar mysteries and walk anew down well-trodden paths, as physical time spent in garden settings itself often does.
Lengthy citations or allusions to figures such as Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, Dante, Chesterton, Gregory the Great and Pope Francis, among others, allow the reader to ponder the indispensability of prayer and the willingness of God to draw near to us in our lives of faith, should we carve out the time and space to accept his always earlier invitation to enter this sacred ground. “There will I meet you,” as God says to Moses, where the human and divine can speak face to face as friends. (Exodus 33:11)
We are now entering the depths of winter in the Garden State, along with the rest of the global North. This text very well might provide some welcome relief from the biting cold and fallow fields, to break out in song along with the Canticle of Canticles, a testimony in many ways to the soul’s rapture with God and vice versa: “With great delight I sat in his shadow and his fruit was sweet to my taste. … Arise O North Wind, and Come O South Wind. Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. … Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!”
An alumnus of Camden Catholic High School, Cherry Hill, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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