Spiritual life has three steps, says a Christian tradition that goes back centuries: the purgative way, the illuminative way and the unitive way. It's a map, not a vague metaphor, and it explains why certain stories of fall and redemption always go through the bottom before reaching the top.
The first step: the purgative way
It's the cleaning phase, the emptying, removing what shouldn't be there. Nobody skips this step. There is no light without cleaning: before any spiritual clarity, it is first necessary to empty what obstructs the vision.
The illuminative way and the unitive way
Only after being cleaner does one actually begin to see: this is the illuminative way. And, finally, the unitive way is union with that which is greater than oneself, the finishing point of the entire journey. The three ways form a ladder, and each step depends on the one before it.
The seventeen years on the rock
It is this map that explains the most radical scene in Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner: the seventeen years Gregorius spends chained to a rock in the middle of the sea, sustained by a minimal sap that oozes from the stone itself, almost turning into mineral. It is the purgative way taken to the extreme, the ego reduced to almost nothing, so that grace can finally fit.
The bridge with Dante
If this map of three ways resembles a mountain being climbed, it's because Dante wrote exactly that. The Purgatory of the Divine Comedy is the purgative way turned into a poem: the soul climbs step by step, leaving one weight behind at a time, before reaching Paradise. It is the same spiritual architecture, in one case narrated in medieval prose, in the other, in verse.
Nobody skips the first one
What the three ways teach, in the end, is that the ascent does not begin with the light. It begins at the bottom, with the cleaning, with the bare rock. Gregorius proves this with seventeen years of stone; most of us are called to prove it with far less, but by the same logic.
Understanding this structure is what turns Gregorius's seventeen years from a bizarre plot detail into one of the most precise theses The Holy Sinner has to offer about the path of the soul.
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Church History Course, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt
In-depth reading of the Church's tradition, chapter by chapter, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt.
Discover the courseFrequently asked questions
What are the three ways of the spiritual life?
It is the map the Christian tradition built to describe the soul's path to God, in three steps: the purgative way, a phase of cleansing and emptying; the illuminative way, when one begins to see more clearly; and the unitive way, union with that which is greater than oneself.
What is the purgative way?
It is the first of the three ways, the cleaning phase: removing what should not be there. Tradition teaches that no one skips this step; there is no light, the illuminative way, without first going through the cleaning of the purgative way.
What is the relationship between the three ways and Dante's Purgatory?
The Purgatory of the Divine Comedy is the purgative way turned into a poem: the soul climbs step by step, leaving one weight behind at a time, before reaching Paradise. It's the same spiritual structure, told in verse instead of treatise.
Continue: The Holy Sinner, by Thomas Mann: summary and analysis · What is sin as disorder · The three traitors chewed up by Lucifer in the Divine Comedy · Why the book is controversial
Source class: O Eleito, de Thomas Mann