An article originally published in Crisis, reprinted at Holy Spirit Interactive, explaining corporal mortifications as a spiritual practice:

But let’s go even further. It’s clear that simply being a good person requires some kind of mortification. If a man doesn’t control his anger or resentment, he’ll be impossible to live with, and may even end up a murderer. Furthermore, if a person doesn’t know how to deny his excessive desire for alcohol, he’ll become useless to himself and others. The child who wants to pass his exam must say no to, or at least postpone, his desire to watch television or play computer games. There is enduring human and divine wisdom in Christ’s powerful words: “For unless the grain of wheat die to itself, it shall not produce fruit.”

St. Thomas More coined the English word “atone” by combining two words, “at one,” to produce one meaning “to reconcile opposing sides of a conflict.” One of the most powerful effects of mortification is the atonement for sin. Indeed, this is the central meaning of the Jewish feast Yom Kippur. Since all sin is a kind of violation of the order of things—whether that of justice, chastity, or human life itself—there’s a need to repair that order, in very much the same way that one is obliged to repair a broken window. Mortification or voluntary suffering restores that order, both in relation to God, who has been offended, and to the person’s own soul, which has been hurt by the sin committed.

St. Paul describes in an existential and vivid way his own battle with himself. It is a conflict that sincere men and women of all centuries and social classes will recognize: “For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

That St.Thomas more factoid is interesting. Can anyone confirm?