Many of you may not know that my middle name is ‘Lion’–L-I-O-N. My Dad gave me this unique middle name because he is a family history buff and knew that the first Gardner in America was named Lion Gardiner (with an “i” in the middle, but that’s another story), so in honor of him, my middle name is Lion. I’ve always enjoyed the uniqueness of that middle name, but only recently have I really come to appreciate the connection to our ancestors. I used ancestry.com to trace the family line all the way back to Lion Gardiner and figured out that it is twelve generations from me to him.
Lion Gardiner was a really impressive man. With a small group of fellow travelers including his wife, Mary, he set out from the Netherlands on July 10, 1635 and traversed the Atlantic Ocean on a ship named Batcheler. The 12 men and 2 women on the ship made it to the Colony of Connecticut and Lion Gardiner spent four years there overseeing the building and fortifying of Fort Saybrook, now known in Connecticut as Old Saybrook. I am so grateful for the courage of Lion Gardiner. He was a world traveler, engineer, soldier, father and so much more. His children were part of the colonial foundation of the state of New York!
It is because of his courageous decision to come with his new wife to this continent that I, along with thousands of others named Gardner, are alive today. What an incredible thing! And this is the way God set up the human family to operate. We are all interdependent and rely upon each other. None of us comes into the world in isolation and nobody truly thrives on their own. We are all part of this huge, complicated, beautiful web known as the human family.
For this reason, it’s fitting that God would save the human family by entering a specific family, by making Himself dependent on Mary and Joseph and eventually calling together the Apostles and disciples to form the family of the Church. Just like each of us owes a debt of gratitude to our relatives who helped to bring about our family on a natural level, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mary and all of the saints and faithful people whose choices of faith have made our Church possible.
God the Father knew that it would be through Mary’s free ‘yes’ to His plan that Jesus would be born among us, coming to save us and gather us into a family relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mary for saying ‘yes’ to God’s plan and for continuing to be faithful to that plan day in and day out until the day the Lord took her home to Him. She continues to participate in the flowering of faith in the family which is the Church by her motherly prayers for us right now. I look forward, God-willing, to seeing Mary one day in Heaven and being able to join her and all of those who have echoed her faithfulness throughout the ages. In Heaven, we can look forward to being part of that joyful cloud of witnesses who get to continually bask in the joy of one resounding ‘YES’ to our Heavenly Father, a ‘yes’ that signifies our family bond in triumph with the whole Church. My prayer is that as we stand on the cusp of the Christmas season, we all look to the shining example of Mary’s faithfulness so that our hearts can grow in the faith that will carry us onto the great family reunion of Heaven and help many others get there, too.
Take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to your heart one person whose ‘yes’ has brought you here to Church today. Now, in your heart, thank God for the gift of that person’s example of faith. Realize this: all of you in this church are or will be that person for somebody else. God has designed the Church to be a family, an interdependent web of people who are all on the journey together. Know that your ‘yes’ to God will touch so many more people than you can possibly imagine. Part of the beauty and joy we look forward to in Heaven is the awe of seeing how God has used our ‘yeses’ to His grace to bring so many other people to Him.
Lion Gardiner had an impact on a natural level for future generations that he probably never would have guessed. It was the same with Mary in a supernatural way. Her humble acts of faith in God have blessed countless millions and billions. My prayer for all of us is that we constantly look to Mary’s example and open ourselves to God’s invitation to follow Him daily, so that our faithfulness can impact many more generations to come in the Church.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for blessing us with such a wonderful mother in Mary. Jesus, thank you for giving us Mary as our Mother from the Cross and for choosing her to be Your mom. Thank you for blessing us through her prayers and example. Holy Spirit, help our hearts with an abundance of grace so that we might bless many others through our cooperation in the Father’s plan for the family of the Church. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +