It is around this time of year that the days start getting longer. I, for one, have been grateful for the extra motivation to get out of bed in order to make it to my 7:00 class at the gym—the extra sun makes the morning easier to bear. The light signals something to me about new life, just as the plum blossoms and forsythia blooms herald the coming spring.

This is also the time of year that we celebrate Lent. The name “Lent” is derived from an Old English word, lencten, meaning “springtime.” In other languages, though, the word for the 40 days leading up to Easter is different, having more to do with fasting (in Norwegian, it’s fastetid) or the length of the season (cuaresma in Spanish, having to do with forty days). Whatever name we give it, Lent is a strange season—forty days set apart to remember Jesus’ death, and to remember that we, too, will die.

The idea of memento mori was written by early Greek philosophers and has had a life of its own as a particularly helpful, if not cheerful, Christian notion. Memento Mori means “remember that you must die.” We did this in a physical way on Ash Wednesday, getting ashes smudged on our foreheads in the shape of a cross as we heard the words, “Remember, from dust you came and to dust you shall return.” Remember that you must die.

The Capela dos Ossos is a chapel in the larger St. Francis Church in Evora, Portugal, a town dating back over two thousand years. Built in the 16th century by a Franciscan monk, the Capela dos Ossos was meant to serve as one big memento mori. Thousands of corpses were removed from neighboring cemeteries and their skeletons placed within the chapel, and a rendering of Ecclesiastes 7:1 is printed on the roof: “Better is the day of death than the day of birth.”

Springtime is beautiful because it is a time of birth. Rain falls, flowers bloom, grass returns to its green shade, and the world looks beautiful. Lent casts a gray pall over that green hue. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are living, but we will die. Our bones may well decorate some future church wall. It is only in the light of that truth that we can truly live, which is the great irony of the Christian faith—just as Jesus fasted in the desert before he died, so do we fast before we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. Before new life, there must be death.

We celebrate Lent in part to imitate Jesus. We lose our lives in Him so that we might gain them back fully. We remember that we will die, and that death will not have the final word. Our fasting is a memento mori of its own, so that even as the days get longer we remember the long shadow cast by death. And then, on Easter, in an act of defiant worship, we cast the shadow off and remember that we will live.

Over the next few weeks, we will devote ourselves to understanding Lent through a series of blog posts. We will hear from different people in the church about what their experience of Lent means to them, and think about how we can live in light of Jesus’ work on the cross. We hope you’ll join us each week.