The three stages of Christian life

As I said at the end of The Seven Sacraments, "mystagogy" is the stage of exploratory catechesis that comes after apologetics, after evangelization, and after the so-called "sacraments of initiation" (Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation) have been received. Baptism and Confirmation may be given only once. Christian initiation, however, is a continuing adventure, since the grace of these sacraments is the source of a new life of prayer that must continue to grow, if it is not to wither and die.

One of the greatest of Christian masters of mystagogy, who wrote under a pseudonym around five hundred years after the birth of Christ, is Dionysius the Areopagite, sometimes called Saint Denys. His influence on Christian mysticism, art, and architecture (through, for example, the school of Chartres in eleventh century France) has been immeasurable, his orthodoxy assured by such admirers and interpreters as Maximus the Confessor in the East and Thomas Aquinas in the West.

Dionysius divided the Christian Way into three phases, which he called purification, illumination and union, and linked these to the three hierarchies of angels, who were thought to assist in each of these three phases—to put it