On Hashtags in General, and One in Particular

This is my first blog post of the new year, patient reader, mostly because I am undisciplined. True to form, I am publishing it on Ash Wednesday, among the busier days in a priest's year. There was a sizable window between the noon service and the 5 PM Confessions (followed by 6:30 PM Mass and subsequent Stations of the Cross) to cut-and-paste this article from the upcoming parish bulletin. 

This Lent I have chosen to refrain from social media, but I think I'll refine that to "not scrolling or checking notifications on social media," which enables me to post and scram. So be kind and decent! No lewdness, profanity, or unkindness. Contact me on messaging apps, email, phone, or in person.

Last November the outdoor parish sign declared, By Death He Trampled Death, and below it #mementomori. By now many of you know that the eight-pointed character technically called the octothorp (no relation to Jim) has in more recent years been called the number sign or the pound sign. Music calls it the sharp sign, to raise the note a half-step (as the character itself shifts). Online parlance dubs it the “hashtag” (perhaps resembling hash browns? You got me).

The hashtag is a kind of organizing tool for social media. Posting persons will share a word or phrase (characters uninterrupted either by spaces or punctuation), beginning the content with a hashtag. Then, whenever one wants to search for that sort of content elsewhere, one simply would enter or click on that hashtag and examples would appear. Hashtagged items, inside or outside the online context, tend to be considered trendy or important.

They say that death and taxes are the two universally unavoidable realities. Both merit our attention this time of year. We should pay the latter by 15 April, while the due date of the former is not known to us. We “prepare” taxes by gathering forms, receipts, and other relevant information, and entering many personal numbers into formulae that determine how much we owe Caesar. How do we “prepare” for death? What’s the schedule for debts to God?

We know God deserves worship and respect, on His terms outlined by the Church. We know our fellow human beings deserve honor and respect in relation to God, their creator and ours. “Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:7-8). 

While we may either pay our taxes incrementally during the year based on what we know we should pay, or we may wait until the end, the debt of love is ongoing and merits attention well in advance of the accounting day.

Dying humbles us, as does aging. We find ourselves able to do less than we could before. People often transition to a point of not knowing what to do, or how to communicate. That’s the incremental tax payment. Some people unexpectedly must render life’s lump sum, when everyone might have thought there was more earning and achieving ahead. From our perspective it might look too random, and who could fault our frustrations?

One of Lent’s best purposes is to draw these realities before our eyes. If they’re already before our eyes, we don’t necessarily get a pass, but here we recall the divine economy offers various opportunities: now to assist fellow sufferers, now to be assisted. The hashtag of remembering death becomes once again the pound sign: the sign to pound the pavement in service of life.

The morbid nature of the #mementomori movement need not sour us. Some people admittedly are drawn to it more than others for how cool it looks. Maybe not cool, but authentic: the realities of death remind us to live, and to do so eagerly. The need to live is always before us, as are the needs of living. God help us to stay sharp.