Jesus said to his disciples: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Matt 16:24). These words of Christ tell us that in order for us to live in the higher order of the life of God’s sanctifying grace, we must die to the lower order of our sinful human nature. This is what is meant by the words to “die to self”, or to “die to sin”. Put another way, in order to obtain salvation, we must practice the virtue of mortification, which is from the Latin word “mortificatio” and that means “to put to death”. Mortification, therefore is self-denial in order to do what is pleasing to God.
Mortifications may also be practiced in the form of sacrificing some legitimate pleasure such as a favorite food or a favorite tv show. These can be offered to God as a means of doing penance or making reparation for past sins, or for failures to love God as we ought to have. We can offer mortifications to make our prayerful supplications to God even more efficacious, such as when asking God for the grace of the coversion of someone we love. Mortification is a means of imitating Jesus in doing the will of His Father.
We should also remember the words of Jesus: “Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light” (Matt 11:28-30). If we are burdened by the weight of our crosses, we should reflect on these words. It is one of the great inexplicable mysteries of God’s grace, that if we are willing to embrace the crosses God sends us to follow Jesus, that at times we may even find a palpaple consolation in the acceptance of those crosses and remember Jesus words: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory” (Luke 24:26). As willing as we shall be to mortify our own self-will in this life, we can be assured to obtain everlasting life in the presence of God in the world to come.