![]() Churches would display memento mori art to compel viewers to meditate on death, reflect on their lives, and re-dedicate themselves to preparing to meet God. To help men remember death, artists created paintings, sculptures, and mosaics depicting skulls, skeletons, and other symbols of death. Our culture is devoted to perpetuating the lie that you can stay young forever and your life will go on and on.īut for men living in antiquity all the way up until the beginning of the 20th century, rather than being a downer, death was seen as a motivator to live a good, meaningful, and virtuous life. It’s a bit too depressing and morbid for our think-positive sensibilities. Us moderns don’t like to think too much about death. As the general basked in the glory of the cheering crowds, the servant would whisper in the general’s ear: “ Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori!” = “Look behind you! Remember that you are but a man! Remember that you will die!” Memento mori is Latin for “Remember death.” The phrase is believed to originate from an ancient Roman tradition in which a servant would be tasked with standing behind a victorious general as he paraded though town. With all the ghosts and goblins decorating homes these days, I figured it’s a great time to talk about one of my favorite genres of art: memento mori. Consider this then, as you decide how to spend the last of it: Tempus fugit, memento mori.In case you’ve forgotten, Halloween is this Wednesday. It certainly is the only year we have available to us. Perhaps this year is the one more you or I have to bear fruit. We only have a finite number of chances to repent, because while God is infinitely patient, our lives are not limitless. The gardener, who is an image of Our Lord as intercessor, asks that it be left alone for one more year in hopes that it might bear fruit. The fig tree has failed to produce fruit for three years, and the owner comes to the gardener to have it cut down. The parable of the fig tree here joins the deaths of these men and women to the shortness of time. How else could we persevere in the face of death? Time though, is short, and we must choose how we spend it. We must set about repairing that relationship with God and, even better, begin avoiding sin out of love for God. But all injures our relationship with God and betrays a lack of love for Him. If we fall into sin after our baptism (God forbid) we can avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Penance. ![]() Of course Our Lord has paid the price so we are forgiven of our sins in baptism. All sin, then and now, demands payment, or restitution for the fact that sin hurts everyone and cheapens God’s creation. But certainly one thing that the Jews offered sacrifice for was sin. That the death of these men transpired as they were offering sacrifice could mean any number of things. Our Lord is speaking not just of the death of the body, but of the soul. Which it will for us all before too long, and it is closer with each second. Neither good nor evil men are given more time when death comes. As God makes the sun to rise, and the rain (or the tower of Siloam as it were) to fall upon the good and the evil alike. He exhorts everyone to repent now before it is too late because perhaps they might perish suddenly like these Galileans, or those killed by the fall of the tower of Siloam. He does not condemn the killings, nor anything else that is deserving of condemnation on the part of the murderers of these Galileans, but exhorts His hearers to repentance.Įvidently the inevitability of death is His chief concern here. Jesus is told of some Galileans who Pilate slew in the temple. It is also a notion that is well reflected in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Tempus fugit, memento mori: ‘time flies, remember death’, is a phrase that can sometimes found on the casing of old clocks, and is a powerful meditation to really keep your attention focused.
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