Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori

Thoughts after a long night chatting with James McTavish and Joe Stauttener on Wednesday.

Tempus Fugit, time flies. Our lives are but short instants on this planet, a place to touch those around us, bear children (if we can), build a better world for the next generation, and remember that we all reach the same end. We have the ability to be more than of this world, but to do that we must free ourselves from its chains of bondage. Not only from man, but from ourselves. To worship and praise our bodies but not become slaves to them. No slave truly loves and worships its master, many only obey it grudgingly.

You see, we have one feature animals don’t, we have the ability to resist all of our instinctual urges, no matter how difficult it may be. Sin is not permanent failure, it is the natural expectation of being human. We will sin, there is no way around it. What matters is we are forgiven and can try to do better each week. In the Catholic mass, I find that the three statements of “Mea Culpa — Through my own fault” are a stark reminder of this.

However, in the very same mass, we state that we can be forgiven, and by the end we are. This allows us to go clean into the world for the next week and improve ourselves. Remembering at all times Tempus Fugit.

Some may say it is God’s grace and blessing on us, hence the song Amazing Grace. We can fail in our resistance, but the forgiveness gives us the strength to fight again for self freedom, to be beyond this world.

It is excuse to state that being a slave to your body is somehow freedom. Freedom is not only not being a slave to a person, but not being a slave to anything, including ourselves. What is worse, once you are a slave to your body, you will forget the most important thing, death will come to us all.

Through remembering death, we can remember that our temporary satisfying of those instinctual urges don’t matter. We become only of this world, and the more we are that, the more we will cease when death arrives.

Memento Mori, remember death.

This is not dark or grim, this is a bright light for anyone who understands it. If you look, you will see those chains, and realize that they can be broken, and we can be more than of this world.

You can actually be free.