Written by Barb Spies, OFS, Director of Mission Services and Pastoral Care

I had a conversation with a friend recently who spoke about how she avoids forms of media that she finds to be soul damaging. She does not watch violent movies or television shows. She does not let her children play violent video games. She does not read negative stories about groups within the church who others say are harmful. She spoke about the harm to the soul from these negative experiences.

I heard a talk at a conference where the speaker discussed spiritual senses. The speaker noted that the soul has senses just like the body. Those senses allow us to know God’s presence. They are senses of the heart. He also explained that they can be numbed by sin. That made me think of my friend’s conversation. This speaker explained that St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan Friar of the late 1200s, wrote about spiritual senses. He said they work in conjunction with our bodily senses. Bonaventure spoke of the beatific touch, where our souls touch and encounter the divine. When he wrote to St. Clare and her sisters, he said, “seek to touch His wounded body with the finger your heart.” He also warned that sin’s effect on our minds and souls make us unable to fully experience God in our lives. 

God is always inviting us to blessedness. When we open our spiritual senses to receiving the divine, we are blessed. Our spiritual senses guide us to do what is right. They open us to serve God’s people. They fill us with compassion as we are filled with the Holy Spirit. St. John Paul II said, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” Listening to our spiritual senses gives us the taste, the touch, the smell, the sight, the sound of holiness. Prayer, contemplation, meditation, help us listen to the Holy Spirit and lead us to connect with those spiritual senses. And, significantly, those spiritual senses give us the experience of God in our lives.

Blessed Angela: “Tell me, O Lord, what I should do. On what road will I meet you and see you? I will go there and will do everything You will demand of me."