Custody of the Senses

Custody of the senses is a practice that involves guarding our five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch from sinning. Our senses can influence thoughts of impurity, feelings of lust, and actions of sin, which are harmful to our souls. By guarding our senses, we can avoid temptations that lead to sin. If we can become proficient at guarding our senses, we can be closer to God as intended.

"Guard your eyes: that they may not look upon anything contrary to purity; your ears: that they may not listen to evil conversation; your mind: by banishing from it all suggestive thoughts; your heart: by stifling impure desires at their very birth." - St John Baptiste de la Salle

"Do not say that you have chaste minds if you have unchaste eyes, because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart." - St. Augustine

"Guard your eyes so that one day you may deserve to gaze upon the Blessed Virgin Mary in Heaven." - St John Bosco

"My eyes, I have filled with Jesus upon Whom I have fixed them at the elevation of the Host at Holy Mass and I do not wish to replace Him with any other image." - St. Colette

"Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to Him. That is all the doing you have to worry about." - St Jane Frances de Chantal

"I am as I am in the eyes of God. Nothing more, nothing less." - St. Francis of Assisi

"Hate what the world seeks, and seek what it avoids." - St. Ignatius of Loyola