We have already two installments on the interior life in our series of articles presented here. To recap, if Lent corresponds especially to the purgative way, and Easter with the Ascension opens before us the illuminative way, then Pentecost is a fitting image of the unitive way: the spiritual age of the perfect, in which the soul, having been deeply purified, lives in a more stable, intimate, and abiding union with God.
Naturally, the only true expression of the unitive way is our own resurrection. I repeat that we are simply using the gift of the liturgical calendar to contemplate the progression of the spiritual life with fitting mile markers.
The unitive stage does not mean that the soul has arrived at heaven. It still walks by faith, not by sight. It still suffers. It still carries its cross. But there has been a real transformation. The soul no longer lives merely in the first efforts of conversion, nor only in the painful light of deeper purification. It has passed, by grace, into a more profound conformity to God, a life marked by habitual recollection, deeper peace, purer charity, and a more constant docility to the Holy Spirit.
That is why Pentecost provides such an apt point of reference. Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange says of the Apostles that, after the Ascension, they were left deprived of “the presence of Christ’s humanity,” but that on Pentecost they were “transformed, enlightened, strengthened, and confirmed in grace by the Holy Ghost.” That movement—from deprivation, darkness, and waiting, to transformation by the Holy Ghost—is exactly what makes Pentecost such a fitting image of the unitive way.
Passive Purification Continued
Like the transition into the illuminative stage, a deeper purification (the dark night of the spirit) marks the traversing through the unitive stage. Our Lord says, “Every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”
Garrigou-Lagrange, following St. Thomas, insists that even those who are already bearing fruit must be pruned. Why? Because even advanced souls still carry deep defects in the higher faculties of the soul. He speaks of “the remains of spiritual or intellectual pride,” of “personal judgment,” “self-will,” and “subtle egoism” still hidden in the depths. These things must be brought to light and burned away if the soul is to reach close union with God.
This is sobering, but it is also freeing. It means that the trials God sends are not meaningless. They are often the means by which he purifies what we could never reach by our own efforts. Garrigou-Lagrange says this purification is “the decisive struggle between two spirits: the spirit of pride . . . and that of humility and charity.” That is why the saints have prayed with such terrifying honesty. St. Augustine’s prayer, later repeated by St. Louis Bertrand, is as blunt as ever: “Lord, burn, cut, do not spare on this earth, that thou mayest spare in eternity.”
The point is simple: Better to be purified here, with merit, than later without it. (That is, we do not merit from our sufferings in purgatory—merit is for those living on earth.)
Pentecost makes sense only after this. The Holy Spirit does not simply descend upon souls that have remained content with self-love. He fills those whom he has emptied. He strengthens those whom he has humbled. He inflames those whom he has purified. Tauler, quoted by Garrigou-Lagrange, says the Holy Spirit creates “a void in the depth of our souls where egoism and pride still dwell.” He creates the void “that he may heal us, and then he fills it to overflowing while continually increasing our capacity to receive.”
The self-enclosed soul must be broken open so that God may dwell and reign there more fully. And what does that life look like?
A Third Conversion?
Garrigou-Lagrange writes:
After the passive purification of the spirit, which is like a third conversion and transformation, the perfect know God in a quasi-experimental manner that is not transitory, but almost continual.
This is one of the defining marks of the unitive way. The soul no longer turns toward God only at chosen moments, nor even mainly in meditation. Rather, it lives increasingly in his presence. “Not only during Mass, the Divine Office, or prayer, but in the midst of external occupations, they remain in the presence of God and preserve actual union with him.”
That line is worth lingering over. The unitive way is not escapism. It is not a retreat from ordinary life. It is the transformation of ordinary life by a nearly continual reference to God—the only way to genuinely “pray without ceasing.”
Garrigou-Lagrange explains this by contrast with the egoist. “The egoist thinks always of himself,” he says, and “his intimate conversation with himself is endless.” But “the perfect man, on the contrary, instead of thinking always of himself, thinks continually of God, his glory, and the salvation of souls.” That is one of the clearest signs of sanctity: the soul is no longer curved inward upon itself, but outward and upward toward God and neighbor.
Pentecost as the Infilling with God’s Presence
This also explains why Pentecost is such a fitting image. The apostles after Pentecost are no longer preoccupied with themselves. They are no longer hidden in fear. They are no longer debating who is greatest. They are wholly taken up into the mission of Christ by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
The soul in the unitive way also comes to know itself differently. Garrigou-Lagrange says the perfect know themselves “no longer only in themselves but in God, their beginning and end.”
This is genuine humility. The soul sees its indigence more clearly than before, but without discouragement. It sees that it can do nothing without grace, that every good comes from God, and that even its own virtues are gifts. This produces not paralysis, but peace. The soul no longer needs to defend itself so feverishly, nor compare itself so constantly, nor be agitated by the success or failure of its own projects.
This is where pure love begins to appear more fully. Garrigou-Lagrange says that the perfect man loves God “by adhering to him, by enjoying him.” He even says that the soul desires heaven “less for his personal happiness than that he may eternally glorify the divine goodness.”
Oof. When you aren’t at that point, you realize how much work you need to do!
At this stage, the soul seeks God more purely for God himself. It still hopes for heaven, of course, but its center of gravity has shifted. It desires God more than the gifts of God.
And because charity has become more purified, peace becomes harder to interrupt. Garrigou-Lagrange says that such souls “almost always keep their peace even in the midst of the most painful and unforeseen circumstances.” This is not temperamental calm or passivity. It is the fruit of the predominance of charity and wisdom under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity
All of this reaches its deepest explanation in the mystery of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. Garrigou-Lagrange insists that the transforming union is not essentially extraordinary, but rooted in what is already given in grace. Christ says, “If anyone love me . . . we will come to him and will make our abode with him.” The unitive way is, in this sense, the fuller flowering of what began at baptism: the life of grace, the indwelling of God, the soul increasingly transformed into a living temple.
Pentecost, then, is not merely an event we remember. It is a pattern for the spiritual life. The Holy Spirit descends, purifies, illumines, strengthens, and unites. He makes the soul recollected, peaceful, generous, and apostolic. He gives not only light, but fire—the fire of divine love.
That is the point toward which the whole Christian life tends. Lent teaches us to repent and wrestle with our passions. Easter teaches us to live in the light of the risen Christ. The Ascension teaches us to lift our hearts above what is earthly. But Pentecost shows us the goal of all of it: a soul made docile to the Holy Ghost, emptied of self, filled with God, and living already the normal prelude of heaven.