Note: In this feature, Whitney Hopler profiles women who write about faith. If you are the author of a new book (published within the past six months) and would like to be considered for an interview, please email Melanie.
By Whitney Hopler
Pondering death is a wonderfully life-affirming practice for those who are brave enough to give it a try. Author Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP guides readers in the ancient spiritual practice of memento mori (a Latin phrase meaning “remember your death”) in two books readers can use on the journey from Lent to Easter: Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional and Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Journal.
“Some people tell me that they do not want to meditate on death because they don’t want to think of the future. They tell me that they’d rather enjoy life now. However, this is precisely what memento mori can help us to do,” Sister Theresa Aletheia says. “We cannot truly live in the moment or even know what it means to live unless we have meditated on death. Reminders of death motivate us to live for heaven now instead of planning for later. Death could come at any moment. These projects serve as reminders to live our lives now for holiness, instead of waiting for some date in the future that might never come.”
She wrote both books to help others with what she has learned on her own journey of remembering death. “When I started to tweet daily about my own practice of meditating on death, many people responded. I realized that this was an opportunity to help others to integrate this practice into their lives.”
Sister Theresa Aletheia, a former atheist who left her corporate job to become a nun with the Daughters of Saint Paul, has been meditating daily on death since one of her fellow sisters gave her a ceramic skull after a spiritual retreat in 2017. Remembering her death has brought 
significant positive change to her life, she says. “I feel like I was swimming through a haze and remembrance of death cut through the haze and sharpened everything around me. Now God is my goal, much more than before. I was a nun living in a convent, but God was not my goal. I cannot say God is entirely my goal even now, but memento mori reminds me continually to make God my goal. We all think we will live until old age, but death could come at any time. Holiness and growing in virtue has become much more urgent in view of the fact that my death is both inevitable and unpredictable.” As she writes in the Lenten devotional book, “Only God knows when each person will die, so preparation for death is an essential spiritual practice, regardless of age.”
Sister Theresa Aletheia guides readers wisely through that preparation process in both the journal and the devotional book. For the devotional, she says, “My hope is that it will bring people to a deeper understanding of the Easter message. Each day contains a refection that I wrote based on the liturgy of the day for all of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter day. The devotional also includes a memento mori examen or review of the day, a daily moment of intercessory prayer, and daily reflections on death from the tradition, including the Church Fathers and many of the saints. … The Lenten devotional is really a treasure trove of more extended meditations on death in the Christian context and it provides a powerful way for people to meditate on their own mortality and the incredible gift of salvation.”
Her book describes how Christ’s work on the Cross changes death from something negative to something positive. As she writes in the devotional book, “The Cross changes everything. With the triumph of the Cross, remembering one’s death involves not only remembering one’s mortality, but also remembering Christ’s victory over death.” Readers can take their fear and other negative emotions about death to Christ and see him transform those feelings into hope, Sister Theresa Aletheia says. “In On the Incarnation, Saint Athanasius describes the disciples of Christ as those who ‘despise death.’ We can only despise death and realize what Christ has done for us by meditating on death. Death has been conquered by Christ. In light of this reality, meditation on death becomes a hope-filled practice. Both projects, Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Journal and Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional, help people to incorporate the practice of remembering death in the Christian context into their lives. The journal can help people to pray with and think about their feelings about death. The devotional can help people to incorporate the practice into their daily lives and to understand the Christian perspective on death. My desire is that both projects will help people to begin to make a journey from fear of death to fearlessness and hope.”
Sister Theresa Aletheia guides readers through the many virtues they can gain from the process of remembering their deaths – virtues such as humility, service, forgiveness, and trust. She hopes readers will use what they learn from practicing memento mori during Lent to keep growing every day of the year. “I hope that readers will use these books as springboards into the powerful practice of memento mori for the good of their spiritual lives. When they are finished using the journal and reading the devotional, they should be able to remember their death regularly in order to embrace the present moment more and to live for heaven.”
Whitney Hopler has written extensively about faith for Crosswalk.com, About.com, and other places.
Ron Aira/Creative Services/George Mason University
She serves as the communications director at George Mason University’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being.
{ 0 comments… add one now }