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. Has it made you quicker to repent ? Has it made you less proud ? Has it made possessions easier to lose, insults easier to forgive, prayer harder to postpone ? Has it made you more careful about what you permit yourself to become ? If not, then knowing you are mortal has done very little for you
There will be a final day and most people will not know when they have reached it. Somebody will wake up for the last time and still think they have next week. They may have plans for Tuesday, food in the refrigerator they intended to eat, something they ordered that hasn't arrived yet, a message they meant to answer and an argument they are still waiting to win. They may also have a confession they intended to make eventually, an apology they meant to give when they were less angry, a sin they were going to stop after one more time and a prayer life they were going to take seriously when everything became less busy. Death is not required to wait for any of those arrangements.
There will also be a last temptation, a last time you are corrected, a last opportunity to forgive somebody, a last opportunity to refuse a sin you have refused a hundred times before or commit it again because you assume there will be another confession afterward. One day God will give you an opportunity and there will not be another earthly opportunity after it. We don't know which ones those are, which is exactly why treating any opportunity to repent as disposable is so foolish.
people have become very comfortable saying God is merciful, and He is, infinitely more merciful than any of us deserve, but somehow mercy gets turned into permission to remain exactly where we are. God forgave me before, therefore i can delay confession. God has been patient, therefore He will provide another year. God understands my weakness, therefore weakness no longer needs to be fought, that is a terrible use of mercy. If somebody repeatedly pulls you out of a pit, gratitude should eventually include trying to stop climbing back into it.
Remember judgment. remember that the body you spend so much time satisfying will become a corpse. remember that the face you are proud of will decay, that the possessions you guard will be divided among other people, that somebody will clear your room, throw things away, decide what is worth keeping and eventually stop needing to make decisions about your belongings because there will be so little left. remember that praise cannot follow you very far and neither can humiliation.
I think we should be much harsher with ourselves about this. If an insult can occupy your mind for three years, remember the grave. If somebody's opinion can make you ashamed of Christ, remember the grave. If you are tempted to sin because you cannot imagine living without a particular pleasure, remember the grave. If you cannot bear losing money, beauty, status, comfort or the admiration of other people, remember that death is already going to take all of them. You can loosen your hands voluntarily or have them emptied eventually, but nobody leaves this life carrying what they spent it clutching, and remember judgment, because Christianity does not teach us merely that we die. We are not practicing detachment because corpses have no possessions. We are preparing to stand before God.
If you would confess tonight because death was coming, confess while death is merely unknown. If you would forgive your enemy tonight, forgive while you still have the humiliation of doing it without being forced. If you would throw away something sinful tonight, throw it away while surrendering it still costs you something. If you would suddenly find an hour for prayer, stop claiming there is no time. If you would beg God to let you repair something, repair it while He has already given you the opportunity, there is value in doing these things before terror makes the decision easy. Anybody can discover that possessions are worthless when they are already dying, learn it while you can still enjoy them. Anybody can stop caring about reputation when there is no reputation left to protect. Become less obedient to it while people can still laugh at you. Anybody can wish they had forgiven once the person they hated is dead. Forgive while the person is alive and the resentment still has to be killed deliberately. People sometimes speak as though thinking frequently about death would make somebody less alive. I think the opposite happens. A person who remembers death has less reason to waste an afternoon feeding resentment, less reason to spend years pretending they will repent eventually, less reason to organize an entire identity around being admired and much less reason to obey every appetite simply because it is loud. Eat, work, make things, love people, laugh, make plans and thank God for whatever is good, but stop behaving as though any created thing has promised to remain with you.
You were never promised old age. You were never promised enough time to become holy after you finish becoming comfortable. You were given today, and today contains enough work for repentance.
One day somebody will pray for the dead and your name may be among the names being remembered.