The Wedding Toast

To Andrea and Bernadette, given with all my love:






THE WEDDING TOAST





Many, many years ago I worked on a pig farm. I had told the farmer that I had worked on a farm before, and he hired me on the spot. I think he needed help desperately. If not, why hire me? What I didn’t tell the farmer was that I had worked only a chicken farm beforehand, and never at all on a pig farm. Whether the farmer was testing me or not, I do not know. But my first assigned task would in fact measure how much I actually knew about key procedures to keep in mind when working with pigs.



I was told to move a mother sow and her seven piglets out of a pen in the birthing house, and into a much larger pen adjacent to the barn, and all the way across the barnyard. How does one do that? I didn’t have a clue. But I must show confidence and an air of command and control to my boss, and that is precisely what I did. Saying to farmer McCalla, “No problem sir!”, I went to the birthing house to do my assigned task. Farmer McCalla handed me a large piece of plyboard as I made my way there. I had no idea what that plywood was for. Maybe for protection… Maybe it was a gate for the new and larger pen…



In any case, once in the birthing house, I opened the pen where the mother sow was with the seven piglets. The result was immediate mayhem. With the birthing house door also open, the sow and the piglets began to run all over the barnyard. Some of the piglets even started to run out into the boar’s field adjacent to the highway. Nothing I tried could get the mother sow under control. Once in the barnyard she sensed the feed bags along the barn wall, and headed to the “food” at a stampede pace. If I valued my life the only course of action I could take was “to get the heck out of her way”!



But the food did contain the mother sow’s movements. As I saw her tear into one of the feed bags, farm experience or not, I was smart enough to know that this mother sow was not going to go any where soon. So I turned my attention to the piglets. As they squealed out of my grasping hands time and time again, I realized that I couldn’t capture one of them. Without a pig farmer’s experience and know-how, I now knew that I was “in way over my head” – or to be more precise, “up crap’s creek without a paddle”.



My near fatal mistake was chasing one of the piglets out into the “boar’s field”. Boars have tusks, and have to be around 700 to 800 pounds. And as soon as I started chasing that piglet out into the boar’s field, the boar started chasing me – “Charging me” would be a better description. Thank God I realized soon enough what was happening, or this story would never be told. The heck with the piglet! I started running toward the boar’s field fence as fast as I could, and leaped over that fence with the grace and prowess of an Olympian. The edge of the boar’s tusks couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 feet behind me.



Once back at the barnyard, I found my breath again, tried to get my heart out of my throat, and back to its proper place in my chest. I also did everything in my power to avert my eyes from the glare and stare of my new boss. How I survived that first day at work, and lived to work there another day, I do not know, and cannot explain. Yet miracles do happen!



But once I did regain my composure, I experienced what I call to this day a “divine illumination”. There was Farmer McCalla using the plywood gate to “whack” the mother sow over to the new and larger pen across the barnyard. All you had to do to control the sow’s movements was hit her in the nose with the plyboard. Once she was in the new pen, an amazing event happened. Gradually but surely, all the piglets made their way to the mother. “Capture the mother, and you’ll get all the children as well.”



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Now even in that moment in the barnyard, as I watched all this unfold before my eyes, I realized the Lord was using this experience to teach me a most invaluable lesson. As the farmer must capture the mother pig to get all the piglets, so the Christian must capture the Kingdom first, and “all else that we need will be ours as well.”



What is the “Kingdom”? What is this central core of the Christian life that we must have even as every man and woman must have a pulsating heart at the center of their existence? The “Kingdom” is the “Reign” of God’s Love over the hearts and minds of all humanity. And to enter the Kingdom each of us must make a “prayer of the heart” like Mary, a prayer of openness to God’s Love, God’s Spirit, a prayer allowing that Love to reign over our heart and mind and human spirit.



This is the “heart” of the Christian life. It is the “treasure hidden in the field’, for which a man goes and sells all that he has, and purchases that field. It is the “pearl of great price” for which a man goes and sells all that he has, and purchases that pearl.



Without the “heart”, all the other parts of the body cease to function, cease to live. We lose all without the heart. We gain all with it. So too in the Christian life. if we seek first the “Kingdom of God”, all else we need will be given to us as well. If we capture the “mother pig”, we will get all the piglets!



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Andrea, I wanted with all my heart for you to marry Bernadette when you told me and my family that she was the “treasure” – the treasure for which a person should go and sell all that they have to but it. And you meant by “treasure” that Bernadette was a “sign” of the Kingdom, that she was for you, like Mary, the face of Christ’s Love.

I knew at that moment that you were of one heart with my daughter because she believes that you are the “treasure” as well. I wanted your marriage from the moment you said this because I knew then that your marriage would “touch heaven”, even as your wedding was a “touch of heaven”. I knew then your marriage to my daughter would bring “heaven to earth” for all of us, even as Mary did.



Hold on to this “treasure” and God’s Love will always go with you. He will never leave you, fail you or forsake you. With this “treasure” of the “Kingdom of God” within you, with this “treasure” of God’s Love” always on fire in your hearts, all else that you need will always come your way. God give you eyes to see what you have: that you now have the “heart” of the Christian life in your hands… You have the “treasure” hidden in the field, you have the “pearl of great price”, you have given all for the “Kingdom”, you have captured the “Mother Pig”!