Tag Archive: memento mori


Eulogy for Aric Emery

Filed under: Community, Watchfulness
August 12, 2023

(July 24, 1981 – July 23, 2023)

Today I gave this eulogy at the memorial service for my friend Aric, who died three weeks ago. Memento mori, meditation on death, is an ascetic discipline after all. Sometimes you choose it. Sometimes it chooses you. But it’s something we all need to do if we want to live our lives in the real world, where all is mortal, even our friends. Hopefully if anyone else finds themselves in that situation, this might help them grieve with the right perspective, too.

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Mementos

Filed under: Watchfulness
September 19, 2018

I have known myself snatched away into true compunction of spirit by the death of a brother monk or of a dear friend or relative. Sometimes the memory of my own half-heartedness and carelessness has elevated my soul. No doubt there are countless occasions of this sort, which can rouse the mind, through God’s grace, from its drowsiness and half-heartedness.

~ “First Conference with Abba Isaac,” 26, from the Conferences of Cassian

Tomorrow, it will have been one year since my father died. There is nothing that can make the loss anything other than that—a loss. Death, I believe as a Christian, is unnatural. Part of us all knows deep down that this is not the way things ought to be, even if this is the way things always have been.

But the ascetic tradition of the Church, and the message of the Gospel of Christ’s resurrection, allow us to temper our grief with hope and channel it to virtuous ends. I have tried, when I can, to do that. Continue reading →

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Eulogy for My Father

Filed under: Watchfulness
September 26, 2017

One week ago, and somewhat suddenly, my father passed away. The burial was yesterday, at which I gave a eulogy. I write a lot about the value of memento mori, the remembrance of death, on this blog. It is the one certainty of our futures that we all will one day die. A life lived as if our road did not end there is therefore only fantasy. As a reminder to myself, and in the interest of encouraging a more sober outlook among others, the text of the eulogy follows below: Continue reading →

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