“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
C. S. Lewis The Problem of Pain
“Pain does not eradicate experience, it makes the experiencer transparent. It weakens the most basic level of the body-self as the agent who ‘owns’ every experience from pain itself to beliefs about God… this can be either terrifying or exhilarating. For a hospital patient it is a momentous loss, a premonition of death. For a monk or nun it may be the gateway to transcendence.”
Ariel Glucklich Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul
Thanks to modern medicine, especially anesthetics, many of us believe that pain should always be medicated away.
For anything from a headache to childbirth, many of us half-jokingly say “give me the drugs.” Judging by the recent opioid crisis, there might be a problem with the way we currently perceive and manage pain. Pain is undesirable in most circumstances—just watch a masochist swear after stubbing their toe—but experiencing pain is part of being alive. In past centuries, self-inflicted pain was also an important part of being Christian.
In rites of passage and ceremonies around the world, painful experiences are spiritually powerful. National Geographic has covered an extreme initiation ritual in the Amazon, where young boys among the Sateré-Mawé people wear gloves filled with stinging ants. As the chief interviewed for the documentary explains, “If you live your life without suffering anything, or without any kind of effort, it won’t be worth anything to you.”
“Initiation With Ants | National Geographic”
Ariel Glucklich discusses several religious examples in Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. While different cultures use different explanations to justify painful rituals, they all seem to achieve an altered state of consciousness. God’s “megaphone to rouse a deaf world” can be comforting to believers who want a clearer connection than distant whispers. Pain isn’t just a disciplinary tool or an obsession for a few psychologically abnormal individuals; it gets to the core of religious experience. “No matter what theology or cosmology informs their imaginations, it is a desire for the personal experience of religious ideals that leads them to hurt the body. Experience, more than any doctrine, shows them that pain can make self-transcending realities accessible and vivid.” (207 Glucklich).
When reading the accounts of martyrs and mystics, it’s tempting to diagnose them with psychological disorders, but those individuals were also shaped by their times and circumstances. The ascetics who whipped themselves for penance were participating in a tradition that had the approval of entire orders. It would be facetious to argue that monks and nuns who practiced self-flagellation were primarily seeking an erotic experience. But sadism and masochism in secular BDSM must also be respected as complex and personal, not simply a sexual outlet or evidence of a psychological problem. Many experienced masochists achieve an altered state of consciousness called “subspace.” Endorphins and other neurochemicals cause euphoria and intense emotions that might feel like flying or floating. Some approach subspace as a spiritual experience, but there are a wide variety of perspectives on the subject.
Motivations for Religious Masochism
Outside of BDSM, self-inflicted pain is currently associated with compulsive cutting, self-harm, and depression. Note: As with any compulsive or addictive behavior, when you feel like you aren’t in control (or you’re unable to stop), it’s important to get help. Some people with psychological problems turn to BDSM as a community where their behavior looks less unusual. Back when the Christian church encouraged the mortification of the flesh, those practices also attracted people who might have been diagnosed with mental illness if they lived in a later era.
“No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
(NIV) 1 Corinthians 9:27
For centuries, self-flagellation with the discipline was seen as a way to share in the suffering of Christ. You might even be able to atone for a fraction of your sins in this world, decreasing the amount of suffering you still “owed” in purgatory. For other Christians, the physical discomfort of a hair shirt was a constant reminder of sin and a tool to motivate self-discipline. A few individuals went above and beyond the norms of their time period.
Christian Mysticism
Christian mystics have generally been viewed with skepticism by Protestant denominations. The ecstatic visions of individuals don’t always align with established orthodoxy. More recently, the novel and movie The Shack were relatable for many laypeople, but the casual reimaging of the Trinity and other core doctrines seemed heretical to Christian leaders. If God is portrayed as a black woman suspiciously similar to the Oracle character in The Matrix, then believers might ask whether this seemingly irreverent choice is simply provocative, or if it has some theological merit. Much like The Shack conflicted with some of today’s teachings about the trinity, the mystics are difficult for many Protestants to reconcile with mainstream theology.
In his “Transposition” essay, C. S. Lewis addresses glossolalia (speaking in tongues) and “the erotic language and imagery we find in the mystics”. He argues that sensual and erotic imagery is our best approximation religious experiences beyond our worldly frame of reference, inherently limited like using the 2-dimensional vocabulary of a “flatlander” to explain 3-dimensional space. Still, it’s jarring for modern readers to read about nuns who perceived their mystical marriage to Christ as something like a personal, physically intimate romance. For several of those mystics, pain was central part of that spiritual experience, and their enthusiasm for pain seems to parallel the modern masochist.
Saint Teresa of Ávila
In 1652, Gian Lorenzo Bernini finished a controversial sculpture called Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Bernini boldly portrayed a reclining Teresa with her mouth open and head thrown back. It’s an expression that makes her interaction with the nearby angel look almost orgasmic. Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was an influential reformer, mystic, and author. She had a series of visionary raptures, episodes that may have resembled epileptic seizures. When she describes the experience portrayed by Bernini’s sculpture, a gruesome spear wound becomes unmistakably (if uncomfortably) erotic:
“In [the angel’s] hand I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul then content with anything but God…So gentle is this wooing which takes place between God and the soul.” (210 Cohen)
Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi
A nun who recovered from a near-death experience, Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi (1566-1607) had visions of intimate, sometimes flirtatious, conversations with Jesus. Respected for her persistence through sickness and suffering, de’ Pazzi said, “Those who call to mind the sufferings of Christ, and who offer up their own to God through His passion, find their pains sweet and pleasant.”
After her recovery, de’ Pazzi found creative ways to continue suffering for Christ. In order to walk barefoot without attracting attention, de’ Pazzi removed the soles from her shoes. She pretended to enjoy foods she disliked and forced herself to be gracious to nuns who were unkind. At one point, she took thorny stalks from an orange tree and tied them around her head. She wore her improvised crown of thorns for a full night. Eventually, she made a nail-studded corset which remained on display after her death. Many of her trials were self-inflicted in secret, but others required the cooperation of fellow nuns.
“Maria on various occasions had herself tied to a post, hands bound behind her back. At other times she lay on the ground and members of the congregation stepped on her body. She slept on rough straw, walked barefoot in the winter, dripped hot candle wax on her own body, dressed in a coarse and irritating garment. When not imitating Christ, she described these and other forms of torment as ways of testing and fighting bodily temptation (like Daniel in the lions’ den), fighting the urge to eat too much, or battling the pleasures of comfort and sexual desire.” (82 Glucklich)
Celebrated on May 25, Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi is associated with physical illness and sexual temptation. Her eccentric food choices have been compared to anorexia and bulimia, but fasting has always been an established and respected part of Christianity.
Masochistic Response to Temptation
If they had been born in later centuries, it’s easy to imagine some of the female saints being diagnosed as hysterical. Yet the male saints and martyrs had their own moments of apparent masochism, especially in the fight against temptation. Saint Benedict of Nursia (480-547) wrote an influential set of rules for monks, and he was eventually venerated as the patron saint of Europe. Pope Gregory I wrote about Benedict’s unusual response to a curious form of temptation:
“the devil appeared before Benedict in the form of a little blackbird, which somehow brought to mind ‘a woman he had once seen, and before he realized it his emotions were carrying him away’. The saint threw himself into a convenient thorn bush to combat the feeling of pleasure.” (300 Thatcher)
Benedict had a complex theological worldview with justifications for his corporal mortification, but it’s interesting that he avoided one temptation (remembering a particular woman) by yielding to another physical urge (the impulse to jump into a thorn bush).
“Landscape with Saint Benedict of Nursia” by Herman van Swanevelt at Museo del Prado
Saint Teresa, Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, and Saint Benedict are extreme examples, but their relationships with pain were not so unusual in the historical church. Far from being condemned, behavior that resembles modern masochism was taken as evidence of their sainthood. Between self-discipline and sharing in the suffering of Christ, there were always justifications for saints who used pain as a tool, but it seems safe to assume that, then as now, some individuals were more predisposed to enjoy those kinds of activities.
In pointing out similarities between masochists and certain saints, the implication isn’t that saints were simply yielding to sensual urges. Nor would it be reasonable to argue that secular masochists are simply trying to fill a spiritual void left by atheism. The objective is merely to broaden our frame of reference, acknowledging parallels between secular masochists and historical Christians who clearly deserve our respect. Among those who don’t “get” BDSM, there’s a tendency to malign and look down upon masochists as people who simply need phycological help. If we can take the long view, masochists actually have special insight into a largely forgotten aspect of traditional Christianity.
Until quite recently, physically sharing in the suffering of Christ was an important part of spiritual growth. Even if it’s no longer believed to lessen one’s sins or “add” to the redemptive suffering paid by Christ, physical pain was important in the personal journey of many believers. Leaders as respected as Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II used self-flagellation with a discipline as an important part of their faith, so it seems like we shouldn’t be too quick to judge others who see pain differently.
Sources:
Cohen, J.M. trans. Teresa de Ávila, Life of St. Teresa. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1957
Quoted in De La Torre, Miguel A. Liberating Sexuality : Justice Between the Sheets. Vol. First [edition], Chalice Press, 2016.
Glucklich, Ariel. “Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul” Oxford University Press, New York. 2001
Thatcher, Adrian. “The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender” Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2014
