Marine Corps Base Quantico -- I suppose that everyone has a favorite season. Mine is the fall. There’s something final about the autumn that inspires deep reflection. All those new springtime leaves that seemed were here to stay forever now hit our windshields as they helplessly flutter to the ground. Nature now seems dead, or dying. Bursting spring youth turned into mature summer and is now decaying fall. We see the cycle of life played out in a thousand different ways.

Catholic Christians (I am a priest) remember and pray for our dead in a particular way during the month of November. Many visit cemeteries so as to maintain closeness with the memory of a departed loved one and to be reminded of a bigger Truth –in Christ, the end of life is a necessary door to Life that does not end.

For now, we live in a society that tries hard to forget its mortality. Death is not to be mentioned in polite company. Even funerals become more about denying death than accepting it. To consider death, or even to bring it up, invites the adjective “morbid.” Isn’t it so much easier to distract ourselves. We have the power to banish all quiet from our lives, and often do. There are so many gadgets and apps, so many directions to go, so much to keep us busy. Death is what happens when we don’t physically train, eat poorly, or smoke. It’s what happens to other people, like those who lived before us, poor chaps. Staying young becomes a full time obsession, and its status as a multi-billion dollar industry reflects our addiction to it.

Um, hello? There is not enough Viagra, Botox, gym memberships or wrinkle-reducers to keep us young forever. The Fountain of Youth, contrary to an avalanche of commercials, has never been found. Death is a part of every life. Death will find each of us.

Should we fixate on death then? Obsess over it? Be consumed by worry? Hurry its arrival? Of course not… that WOULD be morbid, and detract from life rather than enhance it. Here there is, like most things, a healthy middle ground. That, I suggest, is this: our awareness and acceptance of death brings beauty and value to life.

What could make each day more precious than the fact that they are numbered? What could inspire our best efforts to make good decisions than to realize that we only have a certain number of them to make? What urges us to love others here and now more than the fact that we will not always have a now in which to love? What could make our lives more precious than to consider that they are absolutely unique and unrepeatable? What is more important than to find God and live the truth if we know that we will be accountable for our use of freedom? Etc. Like precious metal, life’s limitedness is precisely what makes it a treasure. “Lord, teach me to number my days aright, that I may gain wisdom of heart…” (Psalm 90)

Fall will not last forever. Even now, we feel the onset of another cold winter which will eventually turn into a beautiful spring. And so it goes. Nature’s cycles teach us precious lessons. Life is short. Life is good. Let’s live it now.