Bulletin Column
for February 9, 2020 – Memento Mori
A couple
of weeks ago, the news story broke: Kobe Bryant, the basketball great, was dead
at 41. Along with his 13-year-old daughter and several others, their helicopter
crashed in the fog on their way to a basketball game.
People
were stunned – in the prime of his life, this father and athletic legend would
meet such an untimely demise?
But
then, reports started to surface that Bryant and his daughter were seen at
daily Mass that morning. Bryant was a devout Catholic, and it was not uncommon
for him to attend Mass and receive Communion. Many people were edified at his
example.
What a
grace it would be to receive Holy Communion on the day of our death! May we
always stay so close to the Lord that we may be found in His grace at our
passing.
If you
ever visit St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, you will notice that many of the tombs
of the Popes feature skulls, skeletons, and hourglasses – the symbol of Memento Mori (“Remember your death”).
There is a rich tradition within the Church of being conscious that today may
be our last day on earth. We must always be prepared, for our death may come at
an hour we do not expect.
The
saints knew this. St. Jerome often kept a skull on his desk as he wrote, to
remember the shortness of this life and the length of eternity. The Carthusian
religious community, founded by St. Bruno, would greet one another with,
“Brother, remember your death.”
There is
a sobering church in Rome, officially called the Church of the Immaculate
Conception – but unofficially called the Bone Chapel. In 1631, the Franciscan
pastor of the church had no place to bury the bones of thousands of friars who
had been buried in a local monastery, now closing. He opted to incorporate them
into the decorations in the crypt of the church. To visit the five small
chapels in the crypt is a haunting experience, as you will see chandeliers made
from skulls, rows of vertebrae and femurs decorating the walls, and several
entire skeletons cloaked in the Franciscan habit. There are remains of about
4,000 Franciscan friars in the crypt, all of whose bones have become part of
the decorations. It could be considered macabre, but there is a powerful sign
in the middle of one of the chapels that should give us pause:
“What you are, we once were.
What we are, you will become.”
All of
us walking around on the earth will become like them. For some of us, that
moment will come soon. For others, it may be delayed by fifty or more years.
But for all of us – rich and poor, famous and obscure, no matter our race or
health or bank account, will someday be laid low by the rapacious grasp of
death.
When I
left St. Benedict’s, in appreciation, the fifth-grade CCD class gave me a book
as a parting gift. It was St. Alphonsus Liguori’s “Preparation for Death”. (I
wasn’t sure if they weren’t trying to give me some subtle hint about
something!). It is a powerful reflection about death, and it has us imagine
what it would be like to die having lived a virtuous life of faith, assisted by
Jesus and Our Lady. It then has us contrast that image with a dying man who has
foolishly refused God’s grace for his entire life. What death would be more
envious? The first would be a beautiful passing, a seamless transition into a
new and more abundant life. In the second, the man would do anything to wrestle
and fight with death, to try to buy more life, to be dragged unwillingly into
the darkest night – all because he knows that when death strikes, all of the
pleasures and riches of this world will be utterly meaningless.
Christians
should not fear death – for we are already dead. Priests wear black because it
is a symbol that they are dead to the world – the pleasures of this world no
longer draw them. Early Christians practice baptism by a three-fold total
immersion in water, as a symbol that baptism is a death (going underwater, as
into a tomb) and resurrection (rising up again out of the water, into the air).
Those who are truly dead – who use this world without becoming bound to it, who
love others while remaining healthily detached – do not fear death.
St.
Francis of Assisi put it best in his “Canticle of the Sun”:
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death will
find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
Remember your death, my friends.
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