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Question

Hallo Father,

please, I would like you to clarify some points about inner locutions, these rare phenomena.

When an interior locution comes from above, is it always clear in the message it intends to express with words?

Furthermore, is the meaning immediately and clearly understood?

And, most importantly, can it leave one feeling uneasy and worried about something?

The Priest’s answer

Dear friend,

1. Also named supernatural words by some, locutions are manifestations of God’s thought.

2. These words are named auricular locutions when heard by one’s ear.

When words are heard by internal senses, they are named imaginative locutions or words. They correspond to what you refer to as inner locutions.

3. Let us leave aside another type of inner locutions, called intellectual. These words are heard only by the intellect, with no mediation of the senses. That is, they are not heard. But let us leave aside this topic which belongs to high mysticism.

4. As just said, auricular locutions are those that resonate in the ears of the body.

They are “vibrations, miraculously formed in the air by the ministry of angels”.

Sometimes they seem to come from corporeal visions, from an image, from the Eucharist or from other objects that God uses to instruct us.

There are numerous examples of these locutions in Scripture and in the lives of the Saints.

Some are well known as those heard by Adam and Eve (Gen 3:9), by Hagar, mother of Ishmael and servant of Abraham (Gen 2:14-19), by Samuel (1 Sam 3:4ff), by Zechariah and by Mary (Lk 1:11-20.26-38).

5. Auricular locutions, like corporeal visions, are subjected – with divine permission – to illusion. In other words, the devil can produce them.

6. Imaginative or inner words make themselves understood in the imagination both while we are waking or sleeping.

7. About these, St. Teresa of Avila says: “The words are very explicit but are not heard with the bodily ears, although they are understood much more clearly than they would be if heard – and try, no matter how hard, to resist understanding them is of no avail … In the case of these words God addresses to the soul there is no way of avoiding them … they make me listen and make the intellect so keenly capable of understanding what God desires us to understand that it is not enough either to desire or not to desire to understand” (The book of her life, Ch. 25,1).
Therefore they are crystal clear and not subjected to confusion.

8. St. Teresa indicates several signs to distinguish our mind’s words from the divine inner ones: “Another sign more noticeable than all the others is that these words composed by the intellect do not produce any effect. Those the Lord speaks are both words and works.

And even though the words may be not devotional ones but words of reproof, they attune the soul and prepare it from the very beginning, and they touch it, give it light, favor it and bring it quiet …
Since it seems the Lord wants it to understand that He is powerful and that His words are works” (Ib., 3).

9. Furthermore, inner locutions are not easily forgotten.

Again, St. Teresa of Avila writes: “For the Lord causes them to remain in the memory so that they cannot be forgotten. But the locutions that come from the intellect are like the first stirrings of thought which pass and are forgotten” (Ib., 7).

10. St. Teresa also indicates also several  signs to distinguish between words coming from us from those coming from God: ““Words that come from us have no effect; in fact, the soul does not even accept them, whereas if they come from God, it is as if the soul is compelled to accept them, even if it does not want to” (Ib., 6).

“Therefore, I repeat that it does not seem possible for a soul to deceive itself and claim to hear anything when it is not true” (Ib., 8).

11. Finally, “When these words are from the devil, not only do they fail to have good effects but they leave bad ones. This happened to me no more than two or three times, and I was then advised by the Lord that the words were from the devil. Besides the great dryness that remains, there is a disquiet in the soul like that which the Lord permitted many other times when my soul suffered severe temptations and trials of different kinds. Although this disquiet often torments me, … one is unable to understand where the disquiet comes from” (Ib., 10).
“No mildness remains in the soul when visions or revelations come from the devil; it is left as though frightened and very grieved” (Ib., 11).

12. The criteria by St. Teresa are therefore very clear: if these words come from God, they cannot absolutely confuse, they remain strongly impressed in the memory and always bear good fruits because His words are not just words, but words and works.

I wish you all the best and I bless you.

Father Angelo