The Stoics perceived excessive emotions as various forms of the sickness of the soul, and they invented a method for uprooting these excessive emotions. The key insight offered by the Stoics was that emotions were mental judgments and attitudes toward the factors of life. But when emotions became excessive, their judgments became distorted, and thus needed to be eradicated. The process of eradicating the excessive emotions consisted of an education that aimed to cultivate a correct knowledge of the relation between the factors of life and our judgments of them. This was coupled with a method for spiritual practice that aimed to cultivate virtues. Thus, knowledge and virtues were considered the necessary condition for a happy life.Early church theologians interpreted the Stoic insight on excessive emotions andapatheiafor their own spiritual theology and developed a prayer method aimed at countering excessive emotions and attaining the state ofapatheia. They called the Stoics’ “excessive emotions” the “passions,” and described these passions as “unnatural movements of the soul.” Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century called these same unnatural movements of the soul “disordered affections.” In this sense, both “passion” and “disordered affection” signified the contrary state toapatheia.From a spiritual point of view, when a person is experiencing one or more of the passions, it is impossible for her or him to pray. Thus, the first step in prayer is to prepare the soul for prayer by uprooting any passion one may have experienced and thereby cultivating virtues. When the passions are removed, the soul can perceive the nature of created reality in its own essence. It is like a mirror that has been cleaned of dust, enabling one to see the objects in the mirror with clarity. This comes as the result of the second stage of prayer, which the early church callednatural contemplationor theilluminativeway, and corresponds to the second and third weeks of theSpiritual Exercisesof Saint Ignatius. The final stage of prayer leads to divine union. This final state is the work of God’s grace, but it is also conditioned by the human efforts in preparing the soul in the first two stages.