The Best Is Yet To Come!

 An elderly woman had been a very active and faithful member of her parish for many years.  Knowing that the end was near, she asked her pastor if they might talk about her funeral.  He came to her home and, over tea, they talked about the readings and music and other details of the service.  As the pastor was about to leave, the woman said, “I have one more request.  And it’s a little unusual.”         “And what’s that, Martha?” the pastor asked.        “When they bury me, I want my rosary in one hand and a fork in the other.”        “I’m sorry,” the pastor stammered, caught by surprise.  “You want to be buried with a fork?”        “Yes.  You see, I’ve been thinking about all the church dinners and banquets I’ve attended all through the years.  I couldn’t begin to count them all.  But one thing sticks in my mind.  At all those wonderful suppers, when the meal was almost finished, a server or hostess would come to the table to
collect the dirty dishes.  And, at the best dinners, they would say, “Keep your fork.”  Of course, that meant dessert was coming.  And not just a cup of Jello or pudding or even a dish of ice cream – you don’t need a fork for that.  It meant the good stuff – like chocolate cake or homemade apple pie!  When they said to keep my fork, I knew the best was yet to come!  That’s exactly what I want people to talk about at my funeral.  Oh, they can talk about all the good times we had together.  But when they see me in my casket in my beautiful blue dress, I want them to turn to one another and say, “Why the fork?”  And I want you to tell them that I kept my fork because the best is yet to come!”  
 
       What an incredible statement of faith Martha makes with her fork!  She understands that her long life has truly been a journey to the Messiah’s  banquet .  Unfortunately, in our busy-ness, in our obsessions with work and career, etc., etc., we forget that.  We are so busy about so many things that we fail to make a life.  We are so obsessed with organizing our lives that we overlook the essence of life itself!  God has invited each of us to his Son’s wedding feast – the fullness of God’s life in Christ’s resurrection.  The only obstacle is our inability to hear God’s invitation amid the noisy activity that consumes our time and attention!  God passionately invites each of us to be with him, and he desires a passionate response from us.  He requires that we truly want to be taken into his kingdom.  This desire will not come easily to us at the moment of our deaths if we have not been making it consistently throughout our lives, if we have not strengthened it throughout our lives.      Why not imitate the saints in asking for the grace to love God with your whole heart each and every day?