Easter

'Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.'

Easter greetings to all who browse here.
The painting above is 'Noli Me Tangere' by the Bolognese mannerist Lavinia Fontana. She has gone even farther than Rembrandt in identifying the risen Christ as a gardener; here, he is fully kitted out with a rustic straw hat, a coarse, belted smock, and a serious-looking spade. The spiritual meaning of this identification of Jesus is that Christ is the gardener of the human soul, eradicating what Bob Dylan calls 'the weeds of yesteryear' and planting 'the flourishing seeds of virtue' (as St Gregory the Great put it). It's a teaching that passed out of fashion long ago, but the image can still turn up in unlikely places – none more so that this passage from Ronald Firbank's Valmouth:

With angelic humour Mrs Hurstpierpoint swept skyward her heavy-lidded eyes.
'I thought last night, in my sleep,' she murmured, 'that Christ was my new gardener. I thought I saw Him in the Long Walk there, by the bed of Nelly Roche, tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast.... "Oh, Seth," I said to Him... "remember the fresh lilies for the altar-vases... Cut all the myosotis there is," I said, "and grub plenty of fine, feathery moss..." And then, as He turned, I saw of course it was not Seth at all.'
'Tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast...' – a phrase that often returns to me when I'm working in the garden...

But here, for Easter Sunday, is R.S. Thomas –

Resurrection

Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us
how a stone has been rolled
from the mind, and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.
There are travellers upon the road
who have heard music blown
from a bare bough, and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack
of petrol, is crowned with flowers.