Holy Week is near. It commemorates solemn and awful events. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is arrested, tortured, and executed. Most of His followers make themselves scarce. The Son of Man is betrayed and murdered by those He came to save.

And yet the history, as we know, ends not on Golgotha, on a Friday, but in a garden, three days later, on Sunday.

The memorial of Our Lord’s sacrifice and our redemption is the garden, not the hill of the skull. The dawn of the Resurrection is filled with the scent of flowers.

This past Sunday my wife and I attended Mass at the Franciscan Monastery here in Washington, DC. The monastery has a splendid garden, one of the show places of the city. And in it is a new attraction, an insect and flower garden dedicated to Father James Edmiston. 

Father James was a naturalist and an entomologist. As spring goes on, his memorial can only become more and more beautiful, in the peace and glory of creation, and of its Creator.

By the way, if you want to know what a wolf is doing in the garden, see the story of the Wolf of Gubbio.

IN MEMORIAM

Tribute be given
Of flower and beast
To Father James Edmiston
Friar and priest

Who were his ancestors?
Those who have made
Gardens of flowers,
The lure of the shade

Fishpond and lotus
And a wolf without blame
Who laps in the shadows,
Stays to be tamed

Dragonfly stitches,
The summer air blue,
Red cedar catches
The scent of the rue

Koi in the water
Scarlet and zinc,
Gold as the nectar
The honey bees drink

The blooms and the blossoms,
The insects that grazed
Were studies of his,
A scientist’s praise

This garden is given,
A bouquet of flowers,
A Franciscan heaven
And sweet summer hours