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Poco a Poco

Silence of the Senses

Episode Summary

What if the noise around us is keeping us from hearing the voice of God within us?

In this episode, the friars begin a new series on holy silence, starting with the silence of the senses. They reflect on how our eyes, ears, taste, touch, and even smell are gifts from God, ways we encounter beauty, creation, and one another, but also how easily these senses can become overwhelmed, distracted, or pulled out of order.

This conversation is not about rejecting the world or shutting everything off. It is about learning custody of the senses: allowing the Holy Spirit to bring stillness, freedom, and right order to the ways we see, hear, taste, touch, and receive the world around us.

The friars invite us to consider where our senses may need healing, discipline, or purification, not so we can love less, but so we can love more deeply and become more available to God.

Join us as we learn to quiet the noise, receive the gift of our senses rightly, and make more room for the silence where God speaks.

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Key Takeaways

  • Silence of the senses is not about rejecting the body or hating the world. True silence is meant to create openness and receptivity to God, not lifelessness.
  • Holy silence is a gift that opens space for deeper intimacy with God. Contemplative prayer is “a simple gaze upon God in silence and love”, and silence helps faith receive God’s presence.
  • Contemplative prayer requires a heart that can become still enough to receive the Lord. Silence of recollection disposes to prayer by freeing the mind from interior/exterior agitation.
  • Custody of the senses means learning a disciplined attentiveness, especially guarding the “movements of our passions and of our senses”, so they become obedient to God’s law and right reason.
  • Our senses are gateways to the heart, which means what we see, hear, taste, and touch matters. The Church’s spiritual tradition emphasizes mortification and vigilance regarding the eyes and other senses, because what enters through the senses can shape thoughts and consent.
  • The goal is not to destroy the senses, but to let Jesus redeem and transform them, so they lead to charity, prayer, and right order.

What This Means for Prayer and Daily Life

If your prayer feels noisy, distracted, or scattered, start gently.

Pray with simple honesty: “Lord, my senses are busy. My mind feels crowded. I want to hear You more clearly. Teach me how to become still.”

This episode reminds us that silence does not begin only when everything around us becomes quiet. It also begins when we notice what we are allowing into our hearts through the senses, because vigilance over the senses protects purity, prayer, and conscience.

In daily life, silence of the senses might look like making one small adjustment. Put the phone away for the first few minutes of the morning. Drive without music for part of the day. Sit before the Lord without filling the silence. Choose not to look at something that stirs up comparison, lust, anxiety, or distraction. This is not about becoming rigid. It is about becoming free.

The senses are good, but they need the peace of Christ. When we practice custody of the senses, we make more room for God to speak, heal, and dwell in us. Little by little, the outside world becomes less chaotic inside us, and the heart becomes more available for contemplative prayer, where, eventually, words may no longer be necessary because the soul rests in God.

The invitation is simple: ask Jesus where your senses need peace, and let Him begin there.

FAQ Section: Silence of the Senses

Silence of the senses means allowing the Holy Spirit to bring peace, discipline, and right order to the way we see, hear, taste, touch, and receive the world, so the senses and passions become obedient to reason and God’s law, rather than stirring up interior noise

Holy silence is a space of communion where the heart becomes more available to God. In contemplative prayer, silence and love come together as a “simple gaze upon God,” and silence becomes the “space” for hearing and pondering God’s word.

Custody of the senses means guarding and guiding what enters the heart through sight, hearing, taste, touch, and the inner life of attention, especially by watching the movements of the senses and passions and avoiding occasions that lead to sin

The senses are important because they strongly influence thoughts, interior agitation, imagination, and desire. When spiritual quiet is disturbed, prayer becomes harder; the Church teaches that interior noise makes it impossible to welcome God’s presence.

No. While contemplative life has a special form, the Church teaches that silence is part of the practice of Christian prayer and receptivity to God. The goal is a prayerful life where the soul makes room for the Word.

Begin with one small act of custody, such as limiting screen time, choosing quiet instead of constant noise, moderating what you watch and hear, or being more intentional about comfort and attention. The aim is not perfection, but creating the inner conditions for recollection and prayer, so that the soul can listen and receive.

No, silence of the senses does not mean rejecting beauty or hating creation. It means purifying and rightly ordering how beauty affects the heart, so the senses lead to God rather than to disordered desires, distraction, or sin.

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