(see Romans 4:3-5) Religious practitioners in various traditions have found spiritual benefits from voluntarily bringing upon themselves additional pain and discomfort through corporal mortification.
One extreme example of redemptive suffering, which existed in the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe, was the Flagellant movement.
As a partial response to the Black Death, these radicals, who were later condemned as heretics in the Catholic Church, engaged in body mortification, usually by whipping themselves, to repent for their sins, which they believed led to the Black Death.(cf.
A little victim of love can never find frightful that which her Bridegroom sends her … Likewise, Padre Pio said the following about the purification brought about through redemptive suffering:[5]"I want your soul to be purified and tried by a daily hidden martyrdom.
"In Reformed theology, "redemptive suffering is that voluntarily undertaken in the cause of justice and the effort to combat disease.