The Remembrance of Death

Perhaps this is why Fénelon writes, “We cannot too greatly deplore the blindness of men who do not want to think of death, and who turn away from an inevitable thing which we could be happy to think of often. Death only troubles carnal people.”  3

We can maintain a pure perspective on what truly matters by viewing life backward—through the lens of the reality of death.

The Passion Filter for the Remembrance of Death

The remembrance of death also serves us by filtering our passions. Pascal wrote, “To render passion harmless, let us behave as though we had only a week to live.”  4 Notice the practical element in Pascal’s teaching: Remembering death can take the heat out of sinful passions.

Climacus joined him in this counsel. “You cannot pass a day devoutly unless you think of it as your last.”  5 He called the thought of death the “most essential of all works” and a gift from God.  6 “The man who lives daily with the thought of death is to be admired, and the man who gives himself to it by the hour is surely a saint.”  7

Law suggested we make moral choices based on the way we’ll feel on our deathbeds. “The best way for anyone to know how much he ought to aspire after holiness is to consider not how much will make his present life easy, but to ask himself how much he thinks will make him easy at the hour of death.”  8

What man in his right mind would continue contemplating an affair if he really believed he might not wake up in the morning? What person would risk entering eternity in a drunken stupor? What fool would ignore his loved ones and his God for one last night so he could make another quick ten thousand dollars just before he died?

Thomas à Kempis took an even larger view, arguing that the remembrance of death is a powerful force for spiritual growth in general.

Didst thou oftener think of thy death than of thy living long, there is no question but thou wouldst be more zealous to improve. If also thou didst but consider within thyself the infernal pains in the other world, I believe thou wouldst willingly undergo any labor or sorrow in this world, and not be afraid of the greatest austerity. But because these things enter not to the heart, and we still love those things only that delight us, therefore we remain cold and very dull in religion.  9

When we schedule our priorities and follow our passions without regard to eternity, we are essentially looking into the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of seeing things more clearly, our vision becomes tunneled and distorted. We miss the big picture. Law described this skewed perspective:

Feasts and business and pleasures and enjoyments seem great things to us whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them, they all sink into an equal littleness; and the soul that is separated from the body no more laments the loss of business than the losing of a feast.  10

Only the denial of death allows us to continue rebelling against God. Only because we presume sometime in the future to set things right do we consider letting them go wrong now. Some of us will be surprised in our presumption; eventually our spirits will be dulled until we forget we are presuming, and like all the rest, death will catch us by surprise.

That’s why Thomas à Kempis urged us, “Labor now to live so, that at the hour of death thou mayest rather rejoice than fear.”  11 That hour is coming. If it comes tonight, will you be able to rejoice at your state? Or does the mere thought strike fear into your soul? More is involved than just our eternal destiny. God’s mercy may well pass us into His eternal presence, but do we want to enter heaven after faithfully serving God to the best of our ability, or after some desperate, last-minute confession, realizing we have wasted our lives?