Remembering Death
What makes the heart beat? This is a “vital” question for everyone. Whether wealthy or poor, free or imprisoned, healthy or sick, religious or atheist, this is literally a question of life and death. The force that causes the heart to beat is a small electrical current. Life is governed by a small thing in the heart called the sinoatrial node. With each heartbeat, an electrical signal travels from the top of the heart to the bottom. As the signal travels, it causes the heart to contract and pump blood. The source of this current, and electromagnetism in general, comes from God. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times. When this electrical current stops, our bodies stop moving, our minds stop thinking, and the body dies.
For the average young, healthy person, death is far from the mind, and something to avoid thinking about, but as we grow older, we become frail and gravity seems to get stronger, drawing us down towards the earth as if it is pulling us to the grave.
Because all of human existence has been confronted with this reality, it is no wonder that all peoples have contemplated this mystery. The Stoic philosophers believed that death is not only natural, but also necessary for the continuance of life. Death is part of the cycle of life. We can learn how to deal with death by learning about it, preparing for it and using it as an opportunity to live better and become the best version of ourselves.
Many of the saints and philosophers throughout history have recommended contemplating death from time to time, so as to put life in perspective. Museums and art books are filled with paintings of either a man or a woman holding a skull, with darkness behind them, and a single candle shedding light on the pale bone. They saw memento mori as a spiritual exercise to remind one of the contrasts between heaven and earth.
Although this may sound dark to the average person, St. John Chrysostom recommends visiting graveyards and tombs. This is not an exercise in morbidity, but a reconning with reality. He says:
Let us go, I beg you, to the tombs and see the sacraments that are being performed there, see the ruined nature, the corroded bones, the rotting bodies. If you are wise, ponder, and if you are intelligent, tell me: who is king and who is commoner, who is noble and who is slave, who is wise and who is unwise?
Have you not seen how those who lived in luxury, drunkenness, games and other pleasures of life died? Where now are those who went about the marketplace with great haughtiness and many companions? Where is this splendor of theirs now?...Where has it all gone? What has become of this body, which was honored with such care and purity?
He goes on to explain:
The site of the tombs compels each of the viewers to think philosophically about the matters relating to their own death, and persuades them to think that nothing belonging to the present is secure, nor painful, nor good. The person persuaded of these things will not easily be caught by sins net.
Memento mori is distilled down to a simple line in the scriptures, in the book if Sirach, one of the longest extant wisdom books from antiquity, written approximately around 180 BCE:
In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin.
In conclusion, St. John says that this ultimately leads one to detachment from worldly things, which in turn leads to contentment, which is the path towards heaven. St. Ephraim the Syrian wisely said:
If you give all your life to the earth, the earth will give you a tomb; but if you give your life to heaven, heaven will give you a throne.
In conventional warfare, the fighter is faced with the possibility of eminent death each day. The fighter is prepared and ready to fight unto the death. This is especially true for the mercenary who believes with their whole being in the cause of the war and/or the reward. In unseen warfare, we too must face death square in the eyes. St. Isaac the Syrian:
Blessed is the man who remembers his departure from this life and severs his ties with this world’s delights, for many times over he will receive blessedness at his departure and this blessedness will he not lack. and he said: “Blessed is the man who makes himself deaf to every pleasure that separates him from his Creator.”
Most people seem to go through life in denial that they will die. Little thought is given to this impending reality. They are reminded of this when they attend a funeral, and then return to life saying to themselves, “Only others die”, and then carry on with eating, drinking, and immerse themselves in all the things of this world. The foolish person waits until the last minute to face death and then scrambles to find a used coffin salesman. The wise person spends their life slowly building their own coffin so as to be prepared for death. At the end, the one is frightened and the other is joyful.
Yes, each one of us will have the experience of cessation of a beating heart which ends in death, and every death happens either by physics and/or biology, but always because of biology. Life is so delicate and tenuous that we can die by failure of the tiniest blood vessel in the brain, or by drowning in a teaspoon of water, or by the tiniest of bacteria. And then there is death by way of a catastrophic accident or even murder.
In the meantime, most of us get into the habit of functioning on a day-to-day basis as if we are invincible. This cannot be farther from the truth. Yes, the human heart must stop one day, but the heart of the soul is eternal. Remembrance of death is important because it reorients us towards the spiritual heart of the soul, and thus to God. This is where our longing for invincibility is realized. The irony here is that remembering death can lead us to a disposition for immortality.