Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble’s Modern Memento Mori

At Portugal’s Capela dos Ossos, Franciscan monks embellished the chapel partitions with intricate patterns of 5,000 human bones and skulls. An inscription over the doorway reminds the residing on behalf of the useless that ‘our bones await your bones.’ The chapel’s mirror impact is a core compositional precept in memento mori art. Artistically, loss of life is at all times a mode of self-portraiture, however memento mori seeks to catalyze the shock of recognition as a way of considering a extra virtuous life. The shape’s secular origins date to the Stoics, however specializing in the ‘Final Issues’ has additionally been a longstanding a part of Catholic ascetic apply and devotion. In recent times, the rediscovery of Catholicism’s conventional types of artwork, liturgy, and tradition – typically in shocking new iterations – has led to renewed curiosity within the apply. The New York Occasions, for instance, not too long ago profiled writer and modern-day maker of memento mori, Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, as ‘the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die.’ It’s true, she does. However her second identify, Aletheia, means ‘disclosure’ in addition to ‘reality’ in Greek. It factors towards memento mori’s relationship between recognizing the actual fact of mortality and welcoming us into the method of self-examined residing that loss of life discloses. I not too long ago spoke with Sister Theresa Aletheia concerning the type’s up to date resonance.  

Salyer: Social media affords so many composed pictures of existence as actual life. Simulacra.  There’s one thing refreshing about seeing considered one of your posts that merely says: ‘you’re going to die.’ How does a devotion like memento mori – one which’s very centered on the bodily – translate into on-line tradition?

Sr. Theresa: Dying is taboo in our fashionable world. Even after we speak about it, we attempt onerous not to, utilizing euphemisms and saccharine platitudes. Maybe as a result of on-line exercise is so mediated, it contributes to the scandalizing issue for individuals. For hundreds of years, memento mori reminders have been communicated in individual, typically with the very bones of the useless simply toes away. On-line reminders of loss of life, however, all of a sudden present up in our social media feed and damage our efforts at escapism. Memento mori returns us to our our bodies, to our mortality, and to our actual lives, and a variety of us log on to flee simply that. So perhaps on-line memento mori reminders are fairly becoming in that manner. Memento mori is meant to return us to actuality, to our our bodies, to the linear nature of our lives, and to what’s actual and most vital.

Salyer: Is there a manner by which the method of constructing memento mori books and artwork, because the Daughters of Saint Paul do, helps ‘return us to actuality’ such as you’re saying? Crafting one thing’s a bodily course of. On the opposite facet of that, does considering one thing with the senses – seeing or touching loss of life’s reminders, for instance – assist us perceive magnificence in a different way?   

Sr. Theresa: The Daughters of St. Paul (informally often known as “media nuns”) get actually enthusiastic about books as a result of our missionary work for a lot of a long time has been centered in publishing. So after I began tweeting about my apply of each day meditation on loss of life and other people started to ask for assets to take up the apply, we have been ready to reply. I then labored with my sisters to create a memento mori journal, a Lenten devotional, a prayer e-book, and an upcoming Creation companion.

From the start of the initiatives, I knew symbolism and design could be simply as, if no more, vital than the phrases I wrote. In spite of everything, in lots of circumstances, memento mori historically has been extra about symbolism than phrases. Sr. Danielle Victoria Lussier, FSP, understood this and labored with me to create a cranium design for the covers of the books that’s wealthy in symbolism.

My soon-to-be-released e-book, Memento Mori: Advent Companion on the Last Things, would be the end result of Sr. Danielle Victoria’s contribution. She has requested over twenty residing artists to contribute their memento mori-inspired artwork to the e-book. Not like the opposite books, will probably be in full colour. In a manner, that’s extra applicable to memento mori. One may affiliate meditating on loss of life with black and white, dour imagery, however this apply truly permits us to reside in full colour. It provides hope, pleasure, and, perhaps surprisingly, even consolation.

Salyer: In Latin, memento’s within the second individual – ‘you keep in mind that you’ll die.’ Serious about that metaphor of residing in black-and-white versus ‘full colour,’ it strikes me {that a} cranium’s a common picture, one thing you possibly can display print or tattoo, however my very own loss of life is a really private expertise. If memento mori prompts that ‘full colour’ private consciousness, how does somebody then construction it into each day life?

Sr Theresa: I had this similar thought after I first started my journey with memento mori! After I acquired a ceramic cranium for my desk, I in a short time realized that, reasonably than serving as a potent reminder of my very own loss of life, the cranium may simply simply turn out to be an ignored a part of my workplace décor. That’s why I started to share my journey publicly on-line; it started merely as a way to get me into the behavior of meditating on loss of life.

Saint Benedict, the founding father of Western monasticism, exhorted his monks in his Rule to “preserve loss of life each day earlier than one’s eyes.” Each day, common meditation on loss of life is what helps preserve memento mori private. We will simply flip reminders of loss of life into white noise in the event that they don’t immediate us to prayer and deep thought. That’s why it’s vital to consciously combine memento mori as a apply into one’s life.

Typically individuals get actually involved about meditating on loss of life appropriately, however meditating on loss of life may be very easy. It principally entails merely bringing the thought of your eventual loss of life to God in prayer. It doesn’t matter how we do it as a lot as that we do it. One methodology I embody in all my books is The Memento Mori Each day Examen. Primarily based on a way of prayer promoted by a 16^th-century Spanish saint, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the examen helps us to supply God reward and gratitude, determine areas of weak point the place we’d like God’s assist, and to ask for grace for the long run. My model revises the prayer barely to incorporate a step by which an individual explicitly can convey loss of life to thoughts and pray with it within the context of religion.

Salyer: I wish to circle again to the connection you talked about between prayer and thoughtfulness. It strikes me that there’s a variety of overlap between somebody like St. Augustine, for instance, and the Stoics. Aside from Stoicism, which appears to be having a revival, are there any locations the place you see a devotional sense of memento mori mirrored in common tradition?

Sr. Theresa: Amongst all of the pop-culture references to memento mori, the Stoic reference has probably probably the most affinity to the Christian that means of the time period. Little doubt a lot of what Augustine wrote was indebted to Stoic thought. I really like Seneca’s letters specifically; a few of his traces are similar to Augustine’s ideas on the significance of retaining loss of life in thoughts. What Christianity provides to the Stoic worldview is a extra customized view of divine destiny or fortune. Amidst our failings, sins, and incapacity to reside excellent advantage, grace abounds. God’s grace offers us with a capability to reside much more virtuously than maybe the Stoics thought potential.

Different pop-culture references to memento mori are normally nearer to its counterbalance, nunc est bibendum (‘now could be the time for consuming’) or the fashionable model, YOLO, ‘you solely reside as soon as.’ This lifestyle is much from the standard sense of memento mori. It’s rooted in the concept that life is in the end meaningless. I’ve seen fashionable Stoics and Christians alike confuse memento mori with this, however memento mori is something however a name to nihilism or hedonism. Memento mori is about residing our lives thoughtfully, deliberately, and with objective—with God on the heart.

Salyer: ‘Residing deliberately’ – The New York Occasions talked about that you just grew up listening to The Lifeless Kennedys and going to punk reveals. That concept of residing intentionality at all times drew me to punk rising up – eager to not be lied to, wanting a way of justice. In your expertise, have you ever discovered that something interprets between a punk ethos and the charism of non secular life?

Sr. Theresa: I’ve observed that typically when individuals have conversion experiences, they have a tendency to consult with their previous in a derogatory manner that diminishes how God was working of their lives. Folks count on me to talk of punk music and my previous with disgrace and remorse. However in some ways the punk rock saved me after I was rising up in Oklahoma. I used to be combating the issue of struggling and that music, and the opposite individuals interested in that subculture, gave me the house to battle, to want justice, to be offended, and to ask questions.

It’s taken me a while to resolve the place I used to be then with the place I’m now, however I’ve realized that there’s a pure affinity between the 2. I’m nonetheless offended about the issue of struggling. However my rise up towards the issue of struggling is now lived out in my rise up towards sin. I belief that God is doing one thing deeply good on the earth via my dedication to his lifestyle—poor, chaste, and obedient. Punk rock is rebellious, however spiritual life is the last word rise up.

Salyer: If I die earlier than I end writing this text, what’s one thing important you’d have wished that I’d requested you?

Sr. Theresa: You very properly may die earlier than ending this text! And I earlier than the article is printed! Everyone knows somebody who has died with out warning, with out saying goodbye. That’s why memento mori is so vital, no matter one’s spiritual beliefs.

We start to die the second we’re born, and life is lived in accepting that context, not in its denial. Thus, one of the vital vital questions we are able to ask ourselves is, ‘am I going to reside my life avoiding loss of life or getting ready for it?’ I might have wished that you just had requested why it’s vital to do this within the little time you had left.

You’ll be able to comply with Sister Theresa on Twitter and Instagram, and discover the Memento Mori undertaking here. Her essays seem frequently and he or she is the writer of The Prodigal You Love, Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional, and Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Journal.