Cyprian Consiglio

“Other thinkers would further develop the concept of the three stages of the soul’s ascent to God. By the time this concept reached St. John of the Cross in sixteenth-century Spain, the three stages had become known as the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. These stages are intimately tied to St. John’s teaching about the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the soul, which we find explained in his writings, The Dark Night of the Soul and the Ascent of Mount Carmel.”
― Cyprian Consiglio, Prayer in the Cave of the Heart: The Universal Call to Contemplation