To cap off our year together in theology, I gave my high school students an assignment I’m fairly sure several of their parents would later email me about (they did): plan your own funeral.

Pick the songs. Pick the Scripture readings. Pick three people to speak and write what you’d hope they genuinely say about you. Choose two prayers. Finish it off with a one-page letter for the people in the pews. Tell them what you want them to know, remember, and do when they walk out the doors of the church.

I called it the memento mori project. I warned the kids up front: this is going to feel weird and a little unsettling. That’s kind of the point. Christians have been doing this for two thousand years. Desert fathers kept skulls on their writing desks, Puritans resolved to “think much, on all occasions, of my own dying”, those who keep Ash Wednesday are yearly reminded: remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. None of these are meant to make us morbid. They are meant to help us live with greater clarity.

I want to tell you why.

What Is Memento Mori?

The phrase is Latin and, I am told, means something like: remember that you must die. It’s not a practice foreign to Scripture. Moses himself once prayed, “teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Thinking about our inevitable death is a time-honored tradition throughout church history, yet the modern church, with her diligent sanitizing efforts, has almost forgotten it entirely.

Today, the dying are quarantined in hospices and only visited by intentional effort. Funerals are tucked away. Caskets are rarely opened; even then the dead are so made up they look better than when they lived. Whereas cemeteries used to be the walkways into church, they’re now hidden in the deepest corners of our cities. Far from remembering death, we work hard to forget it.

Yet, as Flannery O’Connor once quipped, “The truth does not change with our ability to stomach it.” We can ignore death, but we can’t erase it. When we try to, the effects are real. When we ignore death, we’re prone to treat small things like big things and big things like small ones. Worse, the less we think about death, the less equipped we are to deal with it when it impolitely intrudes into our life.

The Christian tradition takes the exact opposite approach. The wisdom from our fathers is this: don’t ignore death, but look it straight in its cruel eyes and let it teach you how to live. Memento mori is the antidote to our trinket-chasing delusions of forever-life. For the Christian, it is an intentional way to remember Jesus’ empty tomb and glorious throne. For those in Christ, death is not the end of the story, but the beginning of chapter one.

The Blessings of Remembering Death

Here are some of the gifts memento mori offers anyone willing to receive them.

1. It clarifies what actually matters. Standing at the edge of your own grave has a way of reshuffling your calendar. The trivial ceases to be urgent. Petty grievances lose all their power. The phone call you keep putting off to your dad finally gets made. Death is a great editor.

2. It humbles pride. It is hard, as Ryle observed, to be proud when you are standing near a coffin or an open grave. Memento mori deflates the bloated ego. You will soon be dust. With that in mind, it’s hard to value your finely curated resume like you once did.

3. It produces gratitude. Nothing will make you appreciate a working toe more than having a broken one. You see healthy-toed people walk around and think, “They’ve no idea how good it is to walk around freely without pain.” In the same way, facing death makes us deeply appreciate the gifts of life we so often take for granted. Your spouse, your kids, your friends, your morning coffee, the way the morning sun warms your face, none of it is owed you. When you remember that, the ordinary becomes precious and the boring becomes beautiful. Everything is finally seen as the gift it is and you stop waiting to enjoy the life you have now.

4. It loosens your grip on the world. A man sentenced to death doesn’t complain about the thread counts in his bed sheets. Memento mori puts the things of earth in their proper, smaller place. Money, status, sports, or our silly grievances shrink to actual size when measured against eternity.

5. It kills sin’s appeal. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, laziness, procrastination feed on the illusion that we have unlimited time to feast on them. Remembering that your heart will one day stop makes it all the less attached to empty promises and impotent saviors. The coffin exposes sin’s ugliness in a powerful way.

6. It creates urgency for what’s eternal. People who remember they will die love better, forgive sooner, and share the good news of the empty tomb more boldly. They have the hard conversation. They make the phone call. They take the time. They stop waiting until “later” because they realize it might not come.

7. It tests faith. Confessing Christ as Lord in health and prosperity will hit different when you’re laid low in the hospital bed. Practicing memento mori now will help you make a distinction between the things you say you believe and the things you actually believe. Whatever sifts lip-Christianity from heart-Christianity is well worth your time.

8. For the Christian, it stirs joy. This may be the strangest gift of all. For those who belong to Jesus, death is not the epilogue, but chapter one. Not an exit from life, but an entrance to it. It’s the moment the weary and worn pilgrim finally gets home. Remembering you will die is also remembering you will arrive.

9. It strengthens faith. Outside of Scripture, few things have strengthened my trust and gratitude for Jesus’ empty tomb than my loved ones’ full coffins. I remember preaching for my grandparents’ funerals thinking, “My God, it is so good to know the One who’s defeated the monster of death.” When I think about the day I’ll finally be laid to rest, I am all the more grateful to remember, “He is risen.”

A Closing Word

You are going to die. So am I. Pretending otherwise has never made anyone wiser, kinder, or more whole. Remembering it just might.

Number your days, fellow pilgrim. Take a note from the desert fathers and get yourself a desk-skull. Walk a mile or two through a cemetery. Read an obituary. Pray Psalm 90:12 from your heart the moment you rise from bed. Each night you lie down, think of it as a dress-rehearsal for the last time. Maybe join my students in spirit and write out your own funeral. Remember death to get a heart of wisdom.

The grave is not the end of the road for the Christian. It’s the last bend before home. Remember that, and you may find, as the saints have always found, that thinking often about death is one of the surest ways to finally start living.