A TALE OF The Books of Holy Scripture are full of twin stories, Diptychs; sometimes with one story in the Old Testament relating to one in the New, e.g. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac vis-à-vis God the Father’s sacrifice of Jesus; sometimes with both stories in the same Testament; e.g. The two miraculous catches of fish in the Gospels, or the Deliverance of Israel, first from Egypt and then from Babylon in the O.T. Sometimes the two stories are thousands of years apart e.g. The Passion and Death of Samson in the O.T. and the Passion and Death of Christ in the N.T.;
Sometimes the stories are immediately one after the other as with the stories of the Annunciation and Birth of John the Baptist and the Annunciation and Birth of Jesus.
In every case, however, the first story is a key to the understanding of the second. The second story is coloured and enriched by its association with the first.
So, with this in mind, let us take one of these Diptychs and try to draw all we can of the Divine Author’s meaning from it. God is, after all, the supreme dramatist. Before him all the Cicero’s and Dante’s and Shakespear’s of the world pall into insignificance.
Moreover, where these great human authors can only write with words on paper or parchment God can dip his finger into the ink-well of his creative power and write real historic scenes with real live characters on the pages of history itself in order to convey his message to us.
The great Diptych I would like to consider here is the Diptych which places the story of the Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Fall, and the story of the
In the Garden of the Fall, God appears as the Heavenly Father, the Creator of Mankind.
In the Garden of the Resurrection, God appears as Christ, the Redeemer of Mankind.
In the Garden of the Fall God calls out to his fallen creature: “Adam, where are you?” Now, it becomes apparent as we study the parallels of this Diptych, that this is no angry cry of an offended Deity, but rather the heartfelt cry of a Father who has lost his son.
God’s cry of “Adam, where are you?” in the Garden of the Fall is contrasted with Magdalene’s cry in the Garden of the Resurrection: “Where is he? They have taken away my Lord!”
In the first Garden it is God who is seeking man; in the second Garden it is man who is seeking God. The balance is at last restored.
And how fitting it was that it should be Mary Magadalene who represents fallen man seeking his God; she who was sin personified, as it were; she, out of whom seven devils had been cast. She had seen it all, done it all. How beautiful that the Risen Christ should therefore first appear to her – she who was first, the personification of sinful man, and then, the personification of the repentant sinner.
In the first Garden it is man who is hiding from God, in the second Garden it is God who is hiding from man.
Jesus plays a game of ‘hide and seek’ with Magdalene and by his questioning: “Why do you weep? Who are you looking for?” he draws from her the expression of her desire for him: “They have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where the have laid him.”
Then finally, and so beautifully, the scene climaxes in Jesus calling her by her name: “Mary” and at this she recognises him and clings to him with unspeakable joy. In this, so beautiful way, calling her by name, Jesus gives us a sign and a symbol of the utter love with which he forgives and takes us back to himself.
And so the scene of the
