Mortification in Catholic theology
According to Mark 1:6, "John was clothed with a garment of camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle about his loins, and he ate locusts and wild honey" (DRC).
"[citation needed] St. Dominic Loricatus (995–1060) is said to have performed "one hundred years penance" by chanting 20 psalters accompanied by 300,000 lashes over six days.
[a] Later, Saint Francis of Assisi, who is said to have received stigmata, painful wounds like those of Jesus Christ, is said to have asked pardon to his body, whom he called "Brother Ass",[4] for the severe self-afflicted penances he has done: vigils, fasts, frequent flagellations and the use of a hairshirt.
A Doctor of the Church, St. Catherine of Siena (died 1380), was a Dominican tertiary who lived in the way of a consecrated virgin and practiced austerities which a prioress would probably not have permitted.
In the sixteenth century, Saint Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, wore a hairshirt, deliberately mortifying his body.
In the Litany prayers to Saint Ignatius he is praised as being “constant in the practice of corporal penance.” He was in the habit of wearing a cord tied below the knee.
[5] Saint Teresa of Ávila, (1515-1582) a Doctor of the Church, undertook severe mortification once it was suggested by friends that her supernatural ecstasies were of diabolical origin.
St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque (22 July 1647 October-17 October 1690), the promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, practised in secret severe corporal mortification after her First Communion at the age of nine, until becoming paralyzed, which confined her to bed for four years.
St. Junípero Serra (November 24, 1713 – August 28, 1784), a Franciscan friar who founded the mission chain in Alta California, was known for his love for mortification, self-denial and absolute trust in God.
Pope John XXIII said of him: "You cannot begin to speak of St. John Mary Vianney without automatically calling to mind the picture of a priest who was outstanding in a unique way in voluntary affliction of his body; his only motives were the love of God and the desire for the salvation of the souls of his neighbors, and this led him to abstain almost completely from food and from sleep, to carry out the harshest kinds of penances, and to deny himself with great strength of soul...[T]his way of life is particularly successful in bringing many men who have been drawn away by the allurement of error and vice back to the path of good living.
I am not afraid of suffering for Thee.” In the early twentieth century, the child seers of Fatima said they had initially seen an angel, who said: "In every way you can offer sacrifice to God in reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for sinners.
Lucia Santos later reported that the idea of making sacrifices was repeated several times by the Virgin Mary and that she had shown them a vision of hell which prompted them to ever more stringent self-mortifications to save souls.
Among many other practices, Lucia wrote that she and her cousins wore tight cords around their waists, flogged themselves with stinging nettles, gave their lunches to beggars and abstained from drinking water on hot days.
At the latter half of the twentieth century, Saint Josemaría Escrivá practiced self-flagellation and used the cilice, a modern-day version of the hairshirt.
[6] Some branches of Christianity have also institutionalized the practice of self-inflicted penance and corporal mortification through their mandate on fasting and abstinence for specific days of the year.
(CCC 1430)[7] Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council, taught in Paenitentiam Agere, an encyclical he wrote on July 1, 1962: Pope Paul VI also stated: Theologians also state that the Son, the second person of the Trinity, united himself, as a person (through the hypostatic union), to everything human (except sin), including pain.
He said very clearly: "If any man would come after me... let him take up his cross daily, and before his disciples he placed demands of a moral nature that can only be fulfilled on condition that they should "deny themselves".
While this is not necessarily mortification, it represents a constant reminder of one's voluntary spiritual enslavement to Jesus through Mary, and the desire to accept suffering as a gift and offer it to God.
Likewise, mortification for reasons of scrupulosity (which is similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder) is considered very harmful: a contemporary example is fasting due to anorexia nervosa.
Catholic moral theologians recommend that the scrupulous not practice mortification, avoid persons and materials of an ascetical nature, and receive frequent spiritual direction and psychological help.
