Jessica Mesman on Remembering Our Mortality

"Daughters of St. Paul Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, author of Remember Your Death: A Memento Mori Lenten Devotional, started keeping a skull on her desk a couple of years ago. She tweeted images of her ceramic skull; relevant quotes from scripture, saints and poets; and the hashtag #MementoMori: 'Remember you will die.' The first time she tweeted 'Day 1 with a skull on my desk,' her website says, she thought nothing of it. But the overwhelming response she received encouraged her to pursue the practice more deliberately. . . .

"Death was, in fact, what drew me back to practicing Catholicism. Specifically, I was drawn to the prominent display of the crucifix in our churches and homes and to meditations such as the Way of the Cross. Catholicism seemed to me the only place in our culture that wasn't afraid to look death in the face. In a Catholic church, I was never asked to deny what, for me, was already a harsh reality.

"In fact the practice of memento mori - meditating on one's death -has a rich Christian history, and Sister Noble is at the forefront of a movement to reclaim it. Remembering our finitude once emphasized the urgency of the call to holiness, but until I saw Noble's tweets, I noted that the 'Death Positivity' movement was being led by secular champions who recognized that our fear of death, and our inability to talk openly about it, was killing us."

In a recent commentary, writer Jessica Mesman reflected on the .

To access her complete essay, please visit:

U.S. Catholic: Remembering our mortality is a practice worth reviving (April 2019)