Death will not accept your Excuses

If you knew you were going to die tonight, there are things you would do before anything else. You would go to confession if you could, you would pray differently, you would remember the people you have wronged and the people you have refused to forgive, and being embarrassed or too proud to speak to them would suddenly seem like an absurd reason to leave something unresolved. There are sins people defend for years that they would abandon immediately if somebody could tell them truthfully that they had six hours left to live, and there are things people call necessary now that they would forget about before dinner. Everybody knows they are going to die, but Knowing it obviously isn't enough. We have managed to turn death into a fact that requires almost nothing from us, something everybody agrees with and almost nobody permits to interfere with the way they live. The useful question is not whether you know you will die, but whether you have allowed that knowledge to correct anything.…