Our Life on Earth Is Brief and Will Pass

The Bible never presents the brevity of life as a mere biological observation. It draws wisdom from it: since man passes away, he must learn to number his days before God. Psalm 90 (89 in the Latin numbering) contrasts divine eternity with human frailty: God remains "from everlasting to everlasting", while man returns to dust, his years vanish "like a sigh", and the psalmist asks: "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."^[1]

"Seventy are the years of our life, or eighty if we are strong... Teach us to number our days aright."^[2]

Job uses the same vegetal image: man "lives but a short time" and is like a flower that blossoms and then disappears.^[3] Isaiah receives the order to proclaim that "all flesh is grass": the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God stands forever.^[4] James takes up this tradition in an even more direct form: human life is "a mist that appears for a little while".^[5]

These images do not despise creation. They only prevent us from absolutizing it.

The grass is real, the flower is beautiful, the mist is truly seen in the light; but none of these realities can bear the weight of eternity. The Bible does not say: earthly life has no value. It says: earthly life has immense value because it is short, received, fragile, and ordered to something greater than itself.

The Christian therefore does not read these verses as an exercise in pessimism. He hears in them a hierarchy: God remains, man passes away, and man becomes wise when he places his passing into the hands of Him who remains. Frailty is not only a threat; it is also a call to depend on God instead of settling into the illusion of a definitive autonomy.

Jesus gives this wisdom a concrete form in the parable of the rich fool. The man has accumulated, enlarged his barns, planned to rest, eat, drink, and enjoy himself. God says to him: "This night your life will be demanded of you."^[6] The problem is not having worked nor having possessed goods; the problem is having lived without being "rich in the sight of God".^[7]

Catholic doctrine gives the brevity of life its exact weight: death is not only the biological end of the body, but the closing of the earthly time in which the soul welcomes or refuses grace. The Catechism teaches that death is "the end of man's earthly pilgrimage", that is, of the time in which God offers him grace and mercy to decide his ultimate destiny.^[8] It adds, against all reincarnation: man dies only once.^[9]

This precision changes everything. If earthly life were merely a repeatable cycle, we could always defer. If death were mere extinction, Christian wisdom would be incomprehensible. But if death fixes the fundamental orientation of the soul, then the present time becomes formidably precious. Each day is a place of grace, not a mere piece of duration.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in his Preparation for Death, sums up this logic with pastoral vigour: death comes, the end comes, and man must learn to consider in advance what he will then see with evidence.^[10] His goal is not to terrify in order to paralyse, but to awaken in order to convert. He knows that man often sins because he lives as if death must always happen to others, or only very far away.

"What is your life? A light mist which appears for a little while." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death^[11]

The New Testament associates this closing of time with vigilance. Jesus warns: "Therefore stay awake", for the Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect.^[12] Saint Paul takes up the image of the thief in the night: the Christian does not belong to darkness, so he must remain sober and awake.^[13] Christian vigilance is not a permanent anxiety; it is a way of living today as someone who knows where he is going.

This vigilance is more concrete than a religious emotion. It consists in not living in contradiction with what we know. If death can come, we must live reconciled. If eternity exists, we must stop treating sin as a detail. If God judges in truth, we must seek the truth right now. If Christ is merciful, we must come to him now, and not vaguely promise to do so later.

The Church has kept this vigilance in her prayer. The Catechism recalls the ancient petition of the litanies: to be delivered from a sudden and unprovided death, not because suddenness would in itself be an absolute evil, but because the Christian asks for the grace of dying prepared, reconciled, turned toward God.^[14]

We must distinguish three realities that are often confused. The first is servile fear, which sees only punishment and can lock the soul in panic. The second is worldly denial, which refuses to look at death and ends up living superficially. The third is filial fear, biblical and Christian: a loving lucidity, which knows that we can lose God and chooses not to gamble with eternity.

The Catholic memento mori belongs to this third reality. It is not a fascination with graves; it is a pedagogy of freedom. The Imitation of Christ, quoted by the Catechism, advises us to behave in our actions and thoughts as if we were to die today.^[15] The sentence seems harsh if isolated; it becomes luminous once we understand its purpose: to live in a state of grace, to avoid sin, not to wait until tomorrow to love.

"If you are not ready today, how will you be tomorrow?" — Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ^[16]

The monastic tradition often takes up this idea.

The Rule of Saint Benedict asks us to "keep death daily before our eyes".^[17] Here again, the intention is not to make monks sad, but to keep them in the seriousness of love. A man who knows he will die forgives more quickly, chooses better, clings less to secondary quarrels, and discerns more clearly what deserves his life.

Saint Francis of Assisi can therefore sing of "Sister Bodily Death" in his Canticle of the Creatures.^[18] Death remains a consequence of sin and a painful separation; it is even called the "last enemy" by Saint Paul.^[19] But in the risen Christ, it is no longer sovereign. It becomes a formidable passage, yet crossed in hope.

The difference is decisive: a Christian spirituality of death is not Stoic in the strict sense. The Christian does not seek merely not to tremble; he seeks to die in love, united to Christ, with a soul purified by grace. True preparation is therefore not a psychological armour, but a sacramental and charitable life.

One of the most frequent errors is believing that meditating on the brevity of life obliges us to despise the earth. Catholic doctrine says the opposite: created goods are good because they come from God, but they become dangerous when treated as the supreme good. Family, health, work, beauty, culture, home, friendship, success: all of this can be received in thanksgiving. None of it can save the soul.

Saint Paul formulates this attitude in one sentence: time is short; let those who use the world live as if they did not fully use it, for the present form of this world is passing away.^[20] The formula does not command cold indifference. It teaches free use: receiving goods, employing them to love, then accepting to let them go.

"Time is running out... For the world in its present form is passing away." — Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 7^[21]

Saint Alphonsus insists on this truth through simple images. At death, he writes, we must "leave everything"; no good of this world enters the tomb with us.^[22] He cites princes and conquerors to show that death puts purple and poverty on the same level: the social distinctions that seem immense become derisory at the edge of eternity.^[23]

This point gives a very sure practical rule: every good that cannot be offered to God must be re-examined. Money can become almsgiving, responsible security, or idolatry. Beauty can become thanksgiving or vanity. Intelligence can become service of the truth or pride. Power can become responsibility or domination. Death reveals what each good will have been in the soul.

Saint Alphonsus, taking up Saint Augustine, uses the image of the traveller: one who crosses a country does not spend his whole fortune building a house he will have to leave a few days later.^[24] The comparison is rough, but just. The Christian can love his house, his country, his profession; he must not forget that he is on the way.

This lucidity does not remove earthly joy. It purifies it. The more a good is recognized as received and passing, the less tyrannical it becomes. We can enjoy it without adoring it. We can lose it without losing God. We can offer it, share it, transform it into charity. Meditation on death therefore frees us from the double trap: idolizing goods or despising them. It teaches us to order them.

The word "vanity" does not mean that everything is absurd. In Scripture, it designates what is breath, fragility, unstable appearance. Ecclesiastes opens with the famous formula: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."^[25] This sentence does not deny God; it denounces the illusion of seeking the absolute in what changes.

The world often promises more than it can keep. It promises security through money, identity through success, immortality through reputation, joy through pleasure, peace through control. Death reveals the limit of these promises. It does not destroy what was true; it removes what was mere decor.

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." — Qoheleth^[26]

Tradition reports the conversion of Saint Francis Borgia before the corpse of the Empress Isabella of Portugal, an episode Saint Alphonsus takes up in his meditation. The beauty, majesty, and honours of the court were brutally refuted by the corruption of the corpse. Borgia is said to have then decided to serve a Master whom death could not take from him.^[27]

This account has a general scope. Each of us has his "grandeurs": social image, projects, possessions, influence, beauty, intelligence, comfort, networks, memories. Death does not ask whether these things were brilliant. It asks what they produced in the soul: pride or humility, selfishness or charity, forgetfulness of God or offering.

The vanity of the world is therefore not first a thesis against the rich. A poor man can be worldly through covetousness, jealousy, or bitterness; a rich man can be poor in heart if he receives, shares, and remains detached. The decisive question is that of adoration: what does the soul treat as its treasure?

Rightly understood, the thought of death does not take away the value of the present; it makes it more acute. If our days are numbered, no act of love is banal. A postponed confession, a deferred forgiveness, a stifled vocation, a prayer always put off until tomorrow take on a new gravity. Conversely, a small sacrifice, a visit to the sick, a word of peace, a hidden fidelity take on an eternal weight.

Sirach sums up this pedagogy: "In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin."^[28] The sentence does not mean that remembering death would mechanically remove every temptation. It means that it tears temptation away from its principal lie: making us believe that an immediate pleasure is worth more than God.

This truth meets ordinary experience. Many decisions change when viewed from a deathbed: a grudge suddenly appears derisory; a social vanity loses its power; fidelity to God becomes the only truly solid thing. Memento mori consists in borrowing that light in advance, so as not to wait until the last hour to understand.

Spiritual masters therefore recommend regular meditation on the last things, but always with pastoral prudence. For a hardened soul, it can be a salutary shock. For a scrupulous soul, it must be surrounded with trust, a well-conducted confession, and hope. The same truth is not given to every soul with the same accent: the Church knows how to speak both to the sinner who sleeps and to the wounded soul who already fears too much.

Yet we must avoid a psychologically unhealthy use of this meditation. The thought of death must not feed scrupulosity, obsession, or self-contempt. It must lead to the concrete acts of Christian life: confession, the Eucharist, prayer, charity, reparation, forgiveness, ordering of life, fidelity to our state of life. If it does not produce more love, it is misunderstood.

The Catholic faith does not stop at observing that everything passes. It proclaims that man is awaited. For those who die in Christ, the liturgy says that life is not destroyed, but transformed.^[29] Saint Therese of Lisieux, dying, puts it with a simplicity that has become famous: "I am not dying, I am entering life."^[30]

"I am not dying, I am entering life." — Saint Therese of Lisieux^[31]

This hope does not remove judgment. It illuminates it. The particular judgment is the soul being brought into truth before God.^[32] Everything that was hidden, mixed, ambiguous, appears in the divine light. For one who has loved God, this light purifies and fulfils; for one who has closed himself to God, it tragically manifests his refusal.

Thinking about death is therefore thinking about an encounter. The Christian does not prepare for an abstraction, but for Christ. It is not only a matter of "succeeding at our eternity" as a personal project; it is a matter of loving Him who comes. The best preparation for death is therefore charity: living today in friendship with God.

Saint Joseph is traditionally invoked as patron of a happy death because, according to tradition, he died surrounded by Jesus and Mary. This devotion says something profound: the Christian asks to die accompanied, in peace, in faith, with the name of Jesus on his lips and the trust of Mary in his heart.^[33]

A "happy death" is therefore not first a death without pain, nor a socially beautiful death, nor a perfectly mastered death. It is a death in grace, in abandonment, received as a passage toward God. It can be medically difficult and spiritually luminous; it can be simple, hidden, without staging, and yet very holy.

The formula may seem austere: living in a state of departure. Yet it means a great freedom. Whoever lives thus does not despise his day; he receives it as a mission. He does not flee his responsibilities; he fulfils them better, because he knows they are entrusted to him for a time. He does not cling to his image; he seeks to be found faithful.

Concretely, this disposition is verified by a few simple questions. If I were to die soon, which reconciliation would I not want to have postponed? Which confession would I not want to have deferred? Which habit of sin would I not want to have maintained? Which act of love would I want to have performed? Which person would I have wanted to serve more?

These questions do not replace normal discernment. We do not make decisions in spiritual panic. But they have a purifying force. They remove much false seriousness. They show that certain devouring worries are secondary, while certain discreet fidelities are essential.

Saint Alphonsus concludes his meditation on our present life as a journey toward eternity with a simple image: the earth is not the definitive house, but the inn we will have to leave.^[34] What matters is not accumulating as much as possible there, but leaving it with a soul ready.

We must also live this disposition in our state of life. A father or mother does not prepare for death by fleeing his family, but by loving it better. A priest does not prepare by dreaming of another mission, but by faithfully serving the one entrusted to him. A sick person does not prepare only through pious thoughts, but through the concrete offering of his suffering. Remembering our end does not make us abstract: it makes us faithful.

Saying that life is brief is not only noting a limit; it is recognizing a grace. God does not give an infinite time to scatter ourselves, but a real time to love. Brevity obliges us to choose. It prevents us from postponing everything until later. It gives each day the density of a preparation.

The Christian therefore does not meditate on death to become sombre, but to become free: free before money, honours, opinion, pleasures, secondary fears; free to love God, to serve his neighbour, to ask forgiveness, to begin again, and to prepare for the encounter.

Our life on earth is brief and will pass. But the love of God does not pass, charity does not pass, and the soul that has learned to live for God does not enter nothingness: it enters the truth of what it has chosen.

• 5 reasons to live only for Heaven — the great spiritual synthesis of the module.
• Our whole eternity depends on our life on earth — the definitive weight of earthly choices.
• The life of Heaven surpasses everything — why heavenly happiness exceeds all created goods.
• The death of one who lives for Heaven is no longer death — the Christian view of the death of the just.