Jonathan Roumie explains his thing for skulls
Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in “The Chosen,” has a collection of skull rings and recently added a matching pendant. He says the skulls serve as a Catholic reminder that earthly life is limited and should be spent wisely. Roumie explained that the reminder helps him focus on what matters and on the call to become saints.
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Jonathan Roumie says his skull jewelry is a reminder of mortality and a prompt to focus on what matters. The The Chosen actor has collected skull rings and recently added a matching pendant, connecting the accessories to the Christian tradition of memento mori—“remember that you will die.” 1
In an Instagram video, Roumie addressed people who find his jewelry unusual. He said the skulls remind him to use his time well and “spend energy on the right things each day,” adding that people are called to become saints. 1
Roumie bought his first skull ring years ago while playing a drummer in a New York theater production. A nun friend later introduced him to the phrase memento mori, giving the ring a spiritual significance for him. 1
The article describes memento mori as a Christian spiritual practice that uses awareness of death not to encourage fear, but to emphasize the value of time and the importance of love, good works, and lasting priorities. 1
Roumie also led a Memento Mori challenge on the Catholic prayer app Hallow, inviting participants to reflect on C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, an allegorical story about souls confronting the choices and attachments that keep them from embracing heaven. 1*
Christian understandings of mortality and the pursuit of holiness
Christianity sees mortality as both a wound in human life and, through Christ, a threshold that can lead to eternal communion with God. Holiness is not a way to escape being human or to despise the body; it is a grace-enabled way of living and dying in Christ. Christians therefore neither treat death as the ultimate defeat nor seek it recklessly: they cherish life, accept death when it comes, and let hope of resurrection shape how they live now.
Christian hope does not deny the loss and fear bound up with death. Death separates a person from bodily life, and the Church’s theological reflection recognizes that this loss is a real diminishment of human fullness. The Christian hope of life with Christ does not mean that the body was a disposable shell or that death is good in itself. Rather, it rests on the promise that death will not have the last word: the resurrection of Jesus shows that “death is not the end of the human story.”
The Christian account also connects mortality with the human condition wounded by sin. Yet it does not follow that the body, or mortality as such, is the source of moral evil. John Chrysostom argues that wrongdoing comes from the will, not simply from bodily existence; the body’s vulnerability can even sober a person and restrain pride. This guards against a misunderstanding of holiness as hatred of the body. Christian discipline is meant to resist sin and order human desires toward the good, not to condemn the body God created.
The central Christian claim is not that death becomes harmless, but that Christ’s death and resurrection open a passage through it. The International Theological Commission describes “death in the Lord” as a death prepared for by a holy life and leading to beatitude. In this way, the old bond between sin and death is broken—not because Christians cease to die physically, but because death can begin to lead to eternal life.
“Through a holy life, to which God calls us by his grace and helps us by his aid, the original bond between sin and death is as it were broken, not because death is physically overcome, but inasmuch as it begins to lead to life eternal.”
This hope is personal and relational: the goal is communion with Christ, not simply survival after death. The same theological reflection says that the Christian’s earthly life is ordered to that communion, which is already possible after death, though the separated soul’s state remains incomplete until the resurrection. So Christian hope looks beyond death without treating embodied life as worthless.
The pursuit of holiness is, in this perspective, preparation to meet God and live in communion with him. The Commission says that the good works of those who die in the Lord “accompany them”; it also connects this preparation with baptism and the Eucharist. Baptism unites Christians to Christ’s death to sin and hope of resurrection, while the Eucharist is described as a pledge of participation in Christ’s resurrection. Holiness, then, is not merely private moral effort or a final act of courage at life’s end: it is a life formed through grace, worship, and faithful action.
This does not mean that holiness can be measured by severity or that a person must achieve perfect virtue before death. Thomas à Kempis urges repentance, perseverance, and attachment to the Cross, expressing the traditional insight that choices made now matter eternally. But the wider picture is not a simple equation between harsher earthly suffering and greater future reward. The supplied sources emphasize grace, good works, and communion with Christ; they do not establish that illness, deprivation, or self-imposed severity automatically makes someone holier.
Christian readiness for death is different from wanting death or taking risks to hasten it. The martyr, in the account of Adrian Walker, neither flees death at the cost of fidelity nor seeks death recklessly. The Catholic bishops’ conference likewise explains that martyrs did not seek death but accepted it when necessary out of love for Christ and hope of union with him. This distinction matters: accepting death in fidelity is not the same as despising life or choosing death as an end in itself.
Nor does hope forbid fear or grief. The Commission says that natural fear of death can coexist with hope in Christ. Jesus himself faced death in obedience to the Father, and Christian confidence comes from that pattern—not from pretending that death is painless or that sorrow is unfaithful. Hope allows Christians to face mortality honestly while trusting that death is a doorway to the Lord, rather than release from a body that was merely a burden.
Remembering mortality can put fame, status, wealth, and pleasure in proportion. Paul Murray’s study of Christian attitudes to death contrasts the passing nature of worldly honors and possessions with the lasting importance of love of God. But this is not a command to withdraw from ordinary life. The bishops’ conference stresses that bodily life is a gift to be cherished both for itself and as an opportunity to serve and accompany others. Awareness of death can therefore deepen gratitude, encourage repentance, loosen attachment to status, and make love of neighbor more urgent.
The Christian pursuit of holiness is thus neither denial of mortality nor fixation on death. It is a way of living in which the body and present life are treated as gifts, sin is resisted, works of love are practiced, and hope is placed in the resurrection. Death remains an enemy and a sorrow, but for those who die in Christ it need not be the final defeat: it can become the passage to the life for which holiness prepares them.