Prof Sanjay Deshmukh
There comes a time in the life of every generation when it must look into the depths of its own soul and ask: What have we done with the gifts entrusted to us? What have we made of the Earth, which was given as a garden? What have we become as humanity, fashioned in the image of the One who is Love?
We find ourselves in such a moment. The soil grows weary beneath our feet. The seas rise and roar with protest. The forests, once cathedrals of life, fall silent. In our cities, the poor remain unnamed. In our homes, the sacredness of time and life is often forgotten. Humanity, surrounded by abundance, yet imprisoned by restlessness, searches for meaning in the echoes of a world too loud to hear the whisper of grace.
And yet- into this aching world comes the enduring message of Easter. Like a sun rising over lands long shrouded in night, Easter does not ask to be understood before it is believed. It asks first to be beheld- to be received as the Divine answer to humanity’s unspoken questions, as the seed of life planted in the furrows of death.
The resurrection is not an event of the past, but the opening of a door that no human hand can shut. It is the triumph not only of Christ over the grave but of Life over decay, of Hope over despair, of Mercy over cruelty, and of Creation over destruction.
To understand Easter rightly is to see that it is not a solitary mystery, but a cosmic one.It is not confined to one morning in Palestine, but explodes outward into every sunrise and every shadowed place. It is the seed of all reconciliation- between God and man, man and man, man and nature
The cross stands at the centre of all human history. It is the singular point where time itself bends- not into chaos, but into the shape of redemption. On that hill outside the walls of Jerusalem, where blood and dust mingled and the sky grew dark, the world witnessed a revelation so profound that it would fracture calendars and silence empires. There, God made Himself most visible in what seemed to be His greatest absence.
To the world, the cross was shame. To the eyes of faith, it was glory concealed in agony. For in the suffering of the Son, the heart of the Father is unveiled—not as a distant deity, but as the God who enters into the brokenness of His creation and bears it in His own flesh.
Here, a new time is born- not by force, but by forgiveness. Not by conquest, but by communion. As His arms stretch wide upon the wood, they embrace not only the thief beside Him, but all of creation: every sinner, every mourner, every weary heart. The crucified God is not the end of hope but its birth pangs. This death is the womb from which eternal life emerges.
At the centre of the Christian life stands a table. Upon it, bread and wine. Simple elements, drawn from the Earth, offered by human hands, transformed by divine grace. This is the Eucharist: the memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ, and the pledge of the world’s redemption.
But the Eucharist is not only a sacrament. It is a lens, a logic, a lifestyle. To live Eucharistically is to see all of life through the pattern of gift, sacrifice, and transformation. It is to live in gratitude, to act in service, to walk in humility. And this Eucharistic vision is precisely what the world now needs, if it is to survive- and more than that, if it is to flourish.
For the ecological crisis is not only about carbon levels and rising seas. It is about the loss of reverence, the eclipse of gratitude, the collapse of restraint. In such a world, the Eucharist stands as contradiction and cure.
In the Eucharist, we receive what we do not deserve. We are fed by Another. We are sustained not by control, but by communion. The bread we break is no longer just bread- it is the Body of Christ. The cup we drink is no longer just wine- it is the Blood of the new covenant. And yet, it remains Earth’s gift: wheat and grape, soil and sun, rain and toil.
To become an Easter people is to take up the cross- not in bitterness, but in hope. It is to live the Beatitudes in a world that resists them. It is to plant gardens where others sow destruction. It is to walk toward the wounds of the world- not to escape them, but to bring the balm of resurrection
The world we must become begins with the person we must become: a person shaped by the cross, radiant with hope, grounded in grace, and willing to walk into the garden again- not alone, but with the Risen One at our side.
He is waiting still, among the trees. Listen- He speaks your name. Now go, and tell the others: The Gardener lives. The garden blooms again.
(Prof Sanjay Deshmukh, head of the department of Life Sciences; Former Vice-Chancellor of the Mumbai University. He can be reached at @sanjaydeshmukh.com. This article here is taken from a 16 page full article written by him).
