PART ONE: Purgation: From Performing for God to Participating with God
Part One
Purgation
From Performing for God
to Participating with God
PURGATION IS THE slow process of being cleansed from the negative patterns and attachments that distort love. It’s not about punishment; it’s about healing. The tradition speaks of purgation as a season of purification, where we begin to slowly root out the sinful habits that prevent us from loving like God loves.
Scripture does not use the word purgation, but it consistently names the reality it describes: seasons of surrender, stripping, and slow interior change. This is the heart of Jesus’ call to deny ourselves and take up our cross—not because God delights in our suffering but because self-emptying is the only path to true fullness. Our ancient stories of faith bear this out—Abraham leaving home, Israel wandering in the wilderness, the disciples dropping their nets. Again and again, transformation begins with detachment. Something has to die before something new can be born.
The wisest Christian writers speak of three recurring experiences that mark the purgative path. It begins with training, taking up the same spiritual practices Jesus himself used—prayer, fasting, solitude, and more. These aren’t techniques for quick results, but a way of dwelling in Christ and participating in grace. Alongside this, we face affliction, which sometimes finds us and sometimes we bring on ourselves. Either way, it interrupts our plans, strips away illusions, and invites us to release our grip on certainty. And then there is temptation, which brings us face-to-face with the parts of ourselves we’d rather avoid—our cravings, impulses, and vices. Our role is to meet what we find there with honesty, courage, and ultimately humility.
So here we are, at the edge of the wilderness. The place where transformation begins. “Let us go forward together,” as Thomas à Kempis once wrote. “Jesus will be with us. . . . He will be our help, as He is our leader and guide.”