Have You Written Your Obituary?

Instead of paying a fine for your next traffic violation, how would you like to write your own obituary? Or would you prefer to interview an undertaker, or perhaps view the bodies of traffic victims in the local morgue? An alternative might be to spend a few hours in a hospital emergency room, viewing injured patients.

These are some of the “fines” imposed on young traffic violators by a judge in Gary, Indiana. This dramatic approach has reduced teenage accidents from three hundred a week to only about twenty-five – a mere twelfth of the former average! In a newspaper interview, the judge remarked: “When they bring in their obits and reports, the kids are very chastened. It’s a terrible, sobering experience for them. They learn to foresee consequences. “

If we could foresee the consequences of our failings, we would indeed be chastened. A vision of hell would shock the most inveterate sinner into fervent conversion. Saints given visions of purgatory quickly learned to avoid even apparently insignificant failings. If we could see, with a “God’s-eye view,” the effect of the cooling of our love for God, it would startle us. Yet, it is perhaps more challenging not to see these things, for “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed? (Jn 20:29).

Instead, try pondering the words of Sirach 7:36 (NAB): “In everything you do, remember your last days, and you will never sin.”

This excerpt is from the book One-Minute Meditations for Busy People, by John H. Hampsch, C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/video recordings can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408 or www.Catholicbooks.net