Memento Mori

Third Sunday of Lent Year C

We all suffer from delusions of immortality, invincibility and impregnability, constantly assuring ourselves, “it will never happen to me!” Yes, we see our friends’ parents get divorced, we empathise with them but then we console ourselves, “Thank God, my parents are fine. What happened to his parents will not happen to mine.” We get news that the house down the road was burgled and count ourselves fortunate that we have been spared. We hear stories of our colleagues at work or at church getting tested positive for COVID-19 but then, I continue to cheat on all those annoying public health recommendations because nothing has happened to me. “It’s been two years and I’ve not gotten infected. Nothing to worry about. It will never happen to me.” And then there is death. We know we will die one day, just 'not now'. Many often think that if they don’t talk about it or think about it, they can live to see another day.

Our minds are generally not tuned to abstract risk assessment. We feel invincible, immune from tragedy, until tragedy hits too close to home and then all of sudden, our measure of risks changes, our value system takes on a radical overhaul, and we begin to see our priorities in a different light. But most of the time, tragedy doesn’t have a feel of urgency - it seems too distant, perhaps only appearing as headlines in our newspapers but hardly a tiny blip on my radar of cognisance.

Today, a group of people came to report to the Lord about a tragedy, not a natural one but a bloody slaughter by the Roman prefect, Pilate, and what makes this story more egregious is that the massacre took place while these Galileans were offering sacrifice at the Temple. For those who reported this news to our Lord, were perhaps hoping to elicit some response and statement from Him. This was news that hit close to home - the ones who died were their fellow countrymen, perhaps some were even people whom they knew - friends or relatives. They could never imagine anything like this happening to them, what more to these people who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices.

And our Lord did give them a response, but perhaps not the response they were expecting. When bad things happen, it is so easy to lay the blame on something or someone. So, our Lord cited once again the example of Pilate’s bloody murder but also added a natural tragedy in the form of the tower of Siloam collapsing and killing some people. It’s easy to find a culprit in the first instance, but how about the second? If no human person is to be faulted, would God be guilty of this second tragedy? Or perhaps, it would be easier to postulate that all the victims were actually guilty of sin and were therefore receiving their just punishment?

Instead of placing the blame on someone or something, the Lord immediately makes this a moment of calling His audience to a deeper introspection. The issue isn’t about the guilt of Pilate or those victims but rather, the response each of us makes when we witness tragedy and experience the fragility of human life. “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”

The words of our Lord serve as a “memento mori.” Roughly translated, the Latin phrase means “remember death.” The Church and our ancestors were most familiar with the wisdom of this advice since death was an everyday reality that marked every aspect of life and no one was spared, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick. The call to remember death was surely easier for past generations to embrace than for us. They had visible reminders of death’s grip all around them, whereas many of us can avoid the subject for most of our lives if we choose to.

Yes, we live in a very different world today where life expectancy has risen and infant mortality has dropped, where deaths today occur in medical facilities cordoned off from where we live, and our undertakers have perfected the art of embalming to make the dead look so alive. And where the reality of death fades to the background of our consciousness, other joy-stealing problems are quick to rise up and fill the void. When death is pushed out of our thinking, it isn’t replaced by warmth and peace and happiness. It’s replaced by death’s many other faces. We fixate instead on the comparatively trivial symptoms of our deeper problem. We’re still anxious, still defensive, still insecure, still angry, still despairing. We may detach ourselves from death so we can spend our time and energy chasing happiness. But that detachment won’t change the fact of our mortality, and it won’t ultimately make us happier.

Therefore, the words of our Lord, “unless you repent you will all perish as they did,” still matters today, more than ever. We should remember our mortality, our fragility, our vulnerability and that all of us will die one day; we should remember for these reasons.

First, death puts things in perspective. Without an awareness of death, we may get caught up in pursuing and fearing the most trifling of things. But death changes all of that. What we often fret about will be nullified by death. At death, the only thing which matters is our salvation.

Secondly, death brings the power of God into focus. Recognising the relevance of death every day is how we recognise the relevance of God every day, too. When we are in control, when life seems peaceful and uneventful, most people would never see any need for God.

Thirdly, death can bring back sinners to the path of righteousness. The thief on the cross did it in the last minutes of his life, and our Lord assured him that he would be with Him in paradise. Meditating on death is a call to repentance.

On Ash Wednesday, as the congregation files up silently like in a death march, to receive blessed Ashes, the priest will sprinkle these on the head of the person while speaking one of several formulas, including this: “Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris;” “Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

One day, we will die, just not now. And thus we confidently step in the plane or cross the street and for some of you, decide it’s time to return to Church after the long break of lockdowns and personal isolation during this pandemic. Watch left and right and hope there is no plane crashing into the place you are walking into or a COVID infected person coming close to you. A greater awareness of our vulnerability is positive, if it leaves cracks in our delusional bubble of impregnability. We come to realise that when we are afraid to look at death, we are a poorer people because of it. No matter how long science can prolong life, no matter how much embalming fluid is pumped into a corpse, nature will have her way. This is the hideous Truth. But for us Christians, we can rest in the knowledge that the ultimate Victor is Christ, Our Lord, who walked out of His tomb 2,000 years ago and offers resurrection to us. It is the same Christ who issues us with this warning everyday, reminding us: “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”