DEAR FRIEND - MEMENTO MORI

Blessed Robert Southwell, who was martyred, aetatis Domini, on 21 February 1595, wrote these verses below, so fitting for this month, and for our present age.

This excellent blog-post (H/T FrZ), by Anne Barnhardt HERE reminds us of our frailty, and the need to approach the Sacraments with awe. Now that we have been momentarily deprived of the Holy Eucharist, let us take this to heart, so that when we can next approach the august Throne of the Altar, we shall be properly and humbly disposed.

Every Communion should be received as if it were our First Holy Communion, and as if it were our last - our Viaticum. How many of us can claim that?  Memento Mori. Remember your death.

Read her HERE.

BEFORE my face the picture hangs

  That daily should me put in mind

Of those cold names and bitter pangs

  That shortly I am like to find:

But yet, alas! full little I

  Do think hereon that I must die. 

I often look upon a face,

  Most ugly, grisly, bare and thin;

I often view the hollow place

  Where eyes and nose had sometime been:

I see the bones across that lie,

  Yet little think that I must die.

My ancestors are turned to clay,

  And many of my mates are gone;

My youngers daily drop away,

  And can I think to 'scape alone?

No, no, I know that I must die,

  And yet my life amend not I.

If none can 'scape Death's dreadful dart,

  If rich and poor his beck obey;

If strong, if wise, if all do smart,

  Then I to 'scape shall have no way.

Oh! grant me grace, O God, that I

  My life may mend, sith I must die.

 

The top picture is by Albrecht Dürer (1521), the second by Domingos Rebelo (1919). It is salutary to think that, while romanticised, this depiction of Viaticum in a peasant house is only 100 years old. How much understanding we, and the whole Church, have lost in a century.