Fénelon on the Three Stages of the Interior Life
⏱ 8 min read
You do not know what stage you are in, or whether the language of stages even applies to a soul like yours. The classical Catholic talk of purgation, illumination, union has reached you in passing — a phrase from a retreat, a sentence in a book — and you have wondered, half-uneasy, whether you are supposed to be able to locate yourself somewhere on that ladder and cannot.
François Fénelon, writing letters of spiritual direction from Cambrai in the late seventeenth century, inherited the three-stage language from the older contemplative tradition and used it gently, almost reluctantly, in the letters that became Spiritual Progress. His pastoral case — made slowly, in a hundred small movements across the collection — is that the fenelon stages of spiritual life are real but not diagnostic, descriptive rather than prescriptive, and that the woman who cannot locate herself on the map is most often the woman who is actually walking it. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women was built as the daily small home for the slow interior walk this article describes — one short page per day, one quiet line of scripture, no map demanded. For now, the Fénelon text.
The three stages, named without ceremony
The old tradition names three movements. Purgation — the long, mostly painful early work in which the soul is emptied of the small attachments and false consolations that keep it from God. Illumination — the slow, intermittent middle stage in which the soul begins to see, in flashes, what it has been turned toward, and to be re-shaped by the seeing. Union — the late, mostly hidden movement in which the soul rests in God in a way that is no longer mostly the soul’s doing.
Fénelon does not preach the stages as a hierarchy you climb. He treats them the way an old physician treats the seasons of a long convalescence — this is what the body usually does here, and then here, and then here — without ever forgetting that the patient in front of him is not a textbook. Every soul, in his letters, is treated as if the stage-language is loosely true but the soul itself is uniquely itself. The map exists. The territory is yours. The stages are a frame, not a verdict.
The first passage: simple, lovely, quiet vigilance
“If, then, we never lost sight of the presence of God, we should never cease to watch, and always with a simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance; while, on the other hand, the watchfulness which is the result of a desire to be assured of our state, is harsh, restless, and full of self.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it twice. This is Fénelon’s most useful line for the woman who is anxious about which stage she is in.
The harsh, restless, full of self watchfulness is precisely the watchfulness of the soul trying to locate itself on the three-stage map. Am I in purgation? Have I moved into illumination yet? Why does this feel like the dryness of the early stage when I have been at this for fifteen years? The questions themselves rotate the soul inward, toward its own state, and Fénelon will not let you stay there for long. The simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance — the watchfulness that does not need to know its own stage — is the only watchfulness that actually carries the soul through the stages. You walk the interior life by not watching yourself walk it. The map is most useful to the people who have stopped consulting it constantly.
This is the first pastoral move Fénelon makes against the diagnostic anxiety. Do not try to locate yourself. Walk. The stages will sort themselves out behind you, and you will see them, mostly, in retrospect.
Purgation, walked slowly
“Carefully purify your conscience, then, from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate; you will become lukewarm, forget God, and find yourself growing in attachment to the creature.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
The classical name for this work is purgation. Fénelon names it more practically as the purifying of the conscience from daily faults. The work is small, daily, unspectacular. The small attachments — to being right, to being seen, to the comforting bitterness, to the easy resentment, to the half-spent afternoon on something the soul knows is not feeding it — are loosened one at a time, over years, in the daily small handing-over.
The reason this stage is misunderstood is that it does not feel like a stage. It feels like ordinary Christian life, with intermittent small disappointments about what you keep being attached to. The fenelon stages of spiritual life look, in the daily living, almost identical from the inside whether you are in stage one or stage two. The internal sensation of not being far enough along is itself a feature of every stage, because every stage looks, from the inside, like not yet the next one. The woman who feels stuck in purgation is, very often, already well into the illumination she will only see twenty years later in hindsight.
The work in this stage is not to graduate. The work is to keep handing over the small faults — gently, without scorekeeping, without performance — and to let the slow purification do what it does without supervising it.
A pause for the body
Set the page down. Notice the stiffness that has set into your posture while reading. The three-stage language tends to stiffen the body before it stiffens the soul — a small forward lean toward the page, a held breath at the words purgation and union, a low-grade tightening across the back of the neck. Let the back of the neck soften. Let one slow inhale come in. Let the body remember that the interior life is not a posture you have to hold while reading about it.
The soul that walks the three stages walks them most freely in a body that is not stiff with anxiety about which stage it is in. The stiffness has to go before the walking can be felt.
Illumination — the seeing that is mostly retrospective
“We must make use of all that Christian vigilance so much recommended by our Lord; raise our hearts to God in the simple view of faith, and dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence upon the Spirit of grace, as the only means of our safety and strength.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Illumination, in Fénelon’s letters, is not a stage of bright spiritual experiences. It is the slow accumulation of the simple view of faith — the soul’s quiet, increasingly stable seeing of God in faith, not in feeling. The seeing is intermittent at first, more frequent later, mostly unspectacular throughout. The woman in this stage rarely knows she is in it. She knows only that her dependence on her own striving has loosened, that her resting in the Spirit of grace has deepened, and that the days are increasingly held by something that is not her own willpower.
The illumination is more often noticed by other people than by the soul having it. You will be in it for a decade before you recognise, in a quiet moment, that the way you carry the day now is not the way you carried the day at thirty-five. The illumination is real; it is just structurally hidden from the soul illuminated. (If that hiddenness is the part that frightens you, the slow growth Fénelon said doesn’t feel like growth walks the same thesis at length, and why Fénelon said the Christian’s hardest year is year three is the sibling read on the dry middle this stage often passes through.)
Union — the resting that is not yours
“We must renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self, take part with Thee and shine, O God, against ourselves and ours; have no longer any will, glory or peace, but thine only; in a word, we must love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Union is not a guaranteed destination. Fénelon, who was suspicious of the spiritual ambition that wanted union as a possession, writes about it in a deliberately understated way. The soul that loves God without loving self except in and for Thee is the soul approaching what the old tradition called union — a state in which the soul’s own striving has so quieted that the rest in God is no longer mostly the soul’s doing.
You cannot manufacture this stage. You can only walk faithfully in the earlier ones, and let what comes come. The fenelon stages of spiritual life are not a ladder you climb by ambition. They are a slow growing-into which the soul, after long faithfulness, finds itself inhabiting almost without noticing. The deeper-life thread in the Murray tradition walks the same destination in a different dialect — what Andrew Murray meant by the deeper Christian life is the sibling text in the Protestant key.
What to do with the three-stage language
Hold it loosely. Use it descriptively. Do not let it become another instrument of the anxious self-audit Fénelon spent his whole pastoral life dismantling. The right relationship with the three stages is the relationship of a walker to a map — useful to consult occasionally, dangerous to consult constantly, mostly best folded in the pocket while the walking is done.
The stages are real. They are not your job to track. Walk the day in front of you. Hand over the small faults. Raise the heart in the simple view of faith. Let the stages sort themselves out behind you over twenty years, mostly unseen, and trust the One walking with you to know which one you are in.
Fénelon thought this in 1690. We plan to reprint his letters, slowly, through Everspring Press in the coming years.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
A daily page that walks the stages without naming them
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. One short page per day, scripture pre-printed, space for the quiet walking that does not need a map underneath. For the woman who is ready to stop locating herself on the ladder and to simply walk the next morning.
A slow read in the wider Fénelon arc. Sibling pieces: what Fénelon said about spiritual progress that modern Christians miss and why Fénelon said the Christian’s hardest year is year three. For the surrender underneath the whole walk, see the prayer Andrew Murray said most Christians never pray.
