MORTIFICATION. — An ascetical Christian term indicating the privations imposed upon oneself in order to master the disordered tendencies of nature, with a view to moral and spiritual perfection. The word is of Pauline origin (Col. 3:5; Rom. 8:13).
Mortification presupposes a personal commitment to conquering the world condemned by Jesus Christ (Io. 17:9-16) and constituted by the “lust of the eyes and of the flesh, and the pride of life” (I Io. 2:16), rooted in every human being. To avoid sin and advance in the perfect moral life, it is therefore necessary to combat and overcome the innumerable inclinations that arise from nature corrupted by original sin. This renunciation is rightly called “mortification,” insofar as it kills the desires of one’s own self. Its object extends beyond what is forbidden or commanded; acts of mortification are performed not only to overcome actual temptations, but also to surpass oneself in licit matters.
Mortification is “habitual” when the soul is dead to the world of concupiscence: “the followers of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and concupiscences” (Gal. 5:24); it is “actual” when one performs an exercise of detachment from the world or of renunciation of one’s own tendencies. This occurs either by submitting patiently to the various trials, adversities, and afflictions that arise independently of one’s own initiative, and this is “passive” mortification; or by spontaneously imposing renunciations upon oneself, or performing painful acts, and this is “active” mortification. According as this takes place through predominantly interior acts (humiliations, renunciations of judgment, curiosity, etc.) or exterior ones (bodily afflictions, austerities, privations of sleep, food, comforts, etc.), mortification is “internal” or “external.”
The necessity of mortification for the salvation and sanctification of the soul is a truth repeatedly inculcated by Scripture in the most categorical manner. The Old Testament already admonished: “Do not follow your passions, and turn away from your desires” (Eccl. 18:30). In the New Testament, the teaching of Jesus and his Apostles is explicit: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me” (Lc. 9:23; cf. Io. 12:24; Mt. 22:37; Mc. 8:35, etc.). The Church, heir to the mystery of the Cross, has always inculcated mortification as an indispensable means of loving God; Innocent XI MOLINISMO (v.), who had maintained: “Crux voluntaria mortificationum pondus grave est et infructuosum, ideoque
dimittenda” (Denz-U. 1258-59). All the saints have taught and practiced mortification and love of the Cross. Even those who apparently followed a gentler way of life, such as s. Francesco di Sales and s. Giovanni Bosco, performed extraordinary penances by depriving themselves of sleep, fasting, or imposing other hardships upon themselves. In fact, the Church requires external, even bodily, mortification in order to declare the heroic virtues of a servant of God (cf. Benedetto XIV, De beat. et can. Sanctorum, III, cap. 28). She does not require any particular kind of mortification, but one kind or another. The De Imitatione Christi, epitomizing evangelical and ecclesiastical teaching, rightly states: “You will make as much progress as you have known how to do violence to yourself” (I, cap. 25).
Indeed, as s. Paolo teaches, “we were buried with Christ through Baptism into death.” Our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be reduced to nothing, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin (Rom. 6:6). In the Christian, who must “live for God in Christ Jesus” (ibid., 6:11), sin must not reign, nor may he obey the concupiscences of his mortal body. But since concupiscence persists in man even after justification, having been left to him for the exercise of virtue (Tridentino, sess. V, decr. super pecc. orig.: Denz-U, 792), he must combat it so that it may be held as dead and buried, and so that the soul may persevere in the state of Grace. Mortification is therefore indispensable, in accordance with Christ’s saying: “The kingdom of heaven is seized by force, and the violent take possession of it” (Mt. 11:12; cf. s. Tommaso, Summ. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃc, q. 25 a. 5 and q. 184 a. 2). Mortification, practiced for supernatural motives, is an act of true penance, both satisfactory and meritorious. Through it all temptations are overcome (in which falls always occur through lack of mortification), and a habitual disposition toward humility is generated. Through voluntary mortification, man remembers that he is a sinner and fragile; he develops a spirit of compunction (v.) that prepares the soul for special graces, making the Lord propitious to II. Bodily mortification, rather than uprooting vices in an almost physical or physiological manner, removes or reduces them through the supernatural motives that it impresses upon the soul and the efficacious graces that it draws from God, which cause evil to be hated.
Three principal degrees of mortification may be distinguished: a) overcoming within oneself the tendencies toward sin, avoiding every attachment to a creature that is contrary to God’s will; through such mortification one regulates oneself in all things according to Christian morality (H. Noldin, Theol. moralis, 27ᵃ ed., I, Innsbruck 1941, p. 91); this mortification is necessary for salvation, and through it one reaches toward perfection by combating even the last half-conscious or half-deliberate venial sins. b) Neither loving nor hating any created thing for its own sake; that is, detaching oneself from things, so as to desire them only insofar as they are objects of God’s will (v. INDIFFERENCE). c) Voluntarily embracing, for the love of God, things contrary to one’s own tastes, renouncing even licit pleasures, enjoying them as though one did not enjoy them (I Cor. 7:29 ff.) through an interior renunciation, thereby making oneself more like the suffering Christ, victims with the Expiatory Victim par excellence (cf. B. Rogacci, Dell'uno necessario, Roma 1704-1708, pp. 3, 19). Thus one arrives at the love of the Cross, which consists in preferring, even when the Lord’s glory is equal, sacrifice to pleasure, in order thereby to demonstrate more effectively one’s love for God, who for love of man chose the Cross (Hebr. 12:2). “Since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same thought,” says s. Pietro (I Pt. 4:1). Mortification must always be undertaken with a great, that is, generous, spirit, and regulated by prudence.
To the question whether Christian perfection may also require the mortification of the so-called higher “human values,” such as art, science, personal independence, and civil life, the answer can only be affirmative. This is in fact how Jesus Christ acted, especially during his hidden life in Nazareth, burying himself, as it were; and very many saints did likewise. The justification of this kind of death or destruction within oneself of what is noblest in human life, carried out to the extent that Divine Wisdom may ask of its chosen ones in particular circumstances, is derived above all from the “complete freedom” that the Christian must possess before all that is created, and even before himself, out of respect for God, who is above all things, and for his will. Renunciation of such values, when God requires it, is a concrete demonstration of the “absolute primacy” of God and supernatural things over all natural things, even the highest. In such cases the soul can practically manifest that it loves God “above all things.” This mortification is justified by the fact that it is a renunciation of transitory and temporal things for the sake of definitive and eternal ones; it is therefore the sacrifice of the lesser for the greater. In man fallen through original sin, human nature must be regarded in a certain sense as burdened by a debt of expiation and satisfaction, and thus it is understandable that Id-
God may require it to sacrifice even precious things. Jesus Christ brought his humanity to death on the cross, and Redemption was accomplished in this way. Christian asceticism cannot abstract from the truth defined at the Council of Orange concerning the fallen state in which humanity finds itself and the necessity of a penal restoration; thus the penitential character of the whole of human history and of every true form of asceticism—which does not wish to be tinged with Pelagianism—is explained (cf. Conc. Arausicanum, II: Denz-U, 174; St. Augustine, De nupt. et concup., II, 34, 57: PL 44, 471).