I wrote and contributed the following reflection for the work church’s daily Lenten devotional this week, originally published there on Feb. 19, 2026.
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ash Wednesday can be jarring and uncomfortable. The traditional words of its liturgy — “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” — can hit with an unfathomable and unprepared weight. Perhaps you felt that in the minutes and hours after attending Ash Wednesday worship last night.
We do not often purposefully put ourselves in a position to think about death so bluntly, so matter of factly. Indeed, quite often in our modern world, we do everything in our power to avoid thinking or talking about death or even acknowledging its reality. Humans in the not-so-distant past had no such luxury in a time without modern medicine, and many people around the globe even today cannot escape the daily, in-your-face reality of death.
Ancient cultures, both Christian and non-Christian, found ways of keeping reminders of death, and of life, present in powerful ways. Memento mori is a Latin phrase that means, “Remember death” or “Remember you must die.” Memento mori is also a kind of symbol, often found in church architecture and funerary artwork of centuries past. Sometimes these pieces of art were sculpted out of stone — a grave marking depicting a skull and crossbones or a tomb effigy in the form of a cadaver. But, sometimes, a memento mori came in the form of a far more morbid, more real reminder of death; a medieval catacomb filled to the brim with the skeletons of plague victims and purposefully stacked into religious art is one such example.
Whether in the form of symbolic artwork or as a philosophy for living, memento mori at first seems quite depressing but is actually a call that reminds us of the beautiful gift of life. We are all appointed a time to die, but, as Ecclesiastes teaches us, we are also given a time to live. Remembering our death — remembering our mortality — should teach us to value our life and to experience the joy of living, itself a blessed gift from God. It should instill in us a deep and uncompromising respect for the lives of other people as fellow image-bearers of God.
Ash Wednesday and Lent serve as a powerful memento mori. We are reminded of our death so that we may turn to repentance and trust in the One from whom all life flows, who in taking on flesh in the form of Jesus Christ conquered death and the grave, and whose Spirit graciously guides us through this period of wandering toward the assurance of Easter and everlasting life.
Featured photo by France Trottier, via Pexels.
