Memento Mori

St. Augustine of Hippo wrote: "Magnum mysterium mihi"—I am a great mystery to myself. Why exactly Alfred Hitchcock asked Tom Sullivan to visit him is not clear to us and perhaps was not completely clear to him. But something whispered in his heart, and the visits answered a profound human desire, a real human need. Who of us is without such needs and desires? Some people find these late-in-life turns to religion suspect, a sign of weakness or of one's "losing it." But nothing focuses the mind as much as death. There is a long tradition going back to ancient times of memento mori, remember death. Why? I suspect that in facing death one may at last see soberly, whether clearly or not, truths missed for years, what is finally worth one's attention. 

Link (here) to read the full article by Fr. Mark Henniger, S.J. at The Wall Street Journal