Each of the four senses of Scripture can be linked to the four ways Jesus teaches us to love God: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30)

The literal sense is linked to loving God with all your mind. By understanding what you read in the Bible, you can come to a knowledge of who God is, for you cannot really love someone that you do not know.

The allegorical sense is linked to loving God with all your soul. By discovering where Christ is “hidden” in the Scriptures, we come to know how all of salvation history, a “mystery hidden for ages in God” (Ephesians 3:9), has been planned by God for our salvation in Christ. And so our souls, which are hidden, learn to love the God who has worked in secret for our good for so long.

The moral sense is linked to loving God with all your strength. By recognizing how God teaches us to act and to live true Christian lives, we profess our love for God in every deed we do and in every choice we make, and especially in how we treat our neighbors.

Finally, the anagogical sense is linked to loving God with all your heart. By spending time with God in the intimacy of prayer “from the heart”, we receive a foretaste of our eternal union with Him in heaven. Prayer is communion with God, speaking to and listening to the One for whom we were made.