It says, "As you are now, I once was; as I am now, you soon shall be — remember your mortality!"
No better way to approach Ash Wednesday and 40 days of Lent.
Artists have painted St. Jerome with a skull on his desk. Popes were known to keep skulls in their libraries. I now have a real human skull sitting next to me in my home office.
Are Catholics morbid, obsessed with bones and relics, consumed with the thought of death. Yes and no. We are concerned about these matters, but we are not morbid. We are realistic. We know that life is short and we need to keep things in perspective and our priorities straight.
I wanted to buy my coffin in advance–one to my liking and made of carved oak–to use as a coffee table in our living room. I wanted it there to remind me that someday my body would spend a lot of time in there–under the ground. But my good wife nixed my plans. She said I could get one to stand upright as a bookshelf, but not to set on the floor looking like a funeral parlor.
My goal is to pour out my life for the Savior in this life and to remind myself every day that from dust I came and to dust I will go. The skull reminds me every moment that "it is appointed for men once to die, and after that the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). I want to be ready.