Book 14 argues that the time to practice filial piety is while the parent can still receive comfort. Elaborate memorial rites after death cannot compensate for neglect when the relationship was alive.
The theological point is sharper than “be nice to your parents.” Love that arrives too late has the structure of display rather than attendance. It may honor memory, but it no longer relieves the parent’s actual burden.
This is one of the book’s best correctives to performative religion. The real question is not how beautifully devotion is staged afterward, but whether love was present when it still cost something.