246 The Lord Delights in You

Transcript Speaker 1: The Lord takes delight in his people. Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's May 11th, 2026, Monday of the sixth week of Easter. Today we are joined by clinical psychologist Doctor Peter Malinowski, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts, and host of our sister podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics. Speaker 1: All right. It's good to be back with you, listeners to Scripture for your inner outcasts. A special welcome to all of you, especially you exiles. And I'm zeroing in on our responsorial Psalm. Psalm 149, verse four. The Lord takes delight in his people. The Lord takes delight in his people. And that can be so hard to imagine for you Burdened exiles for you exiles that feel so disconnected from God or from others that the Lord takes delight in you. But here's the thing the Lord takes delight in his people. Yes, his people as an aggregate. Yes, his people as individuals. But God doesn't just take delight in some parts of a person and not other parts. He doesn't take delight in some parts of you, but not other parts of you. He's holistic that way. And all of you, including all you exiled parts, are made in the image and likeness of God. You all share in being a beloved little son or a beloved little daughter of God. If you're baptized and God takes delight in you. But this can be really, really hard to understand. To wrap your mind around, to conceptualize, to imagine if you don't even feel accepted, if you don't even feel included, if you don't even feel tolerated by the authority figures in your life, by the managers who run your system, by others around you who may have when you were young, or maybe when you were older, may have excluded you. Right. So how could it be that God takes delight in you? It's because God is not like all those managers or all those parts of other people who excluded you. Speaker 1: That's why. And you are not your burden. You are not who you see yourself to be. God sees you the way that you actually are fearfully, wonderfully, beautifully made. The great Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book on Love, describes how what is central to love is this statement, quote, how wonderful it is that you exist. End quote. How wonderful it is that you exist. This is the way God looks at you as a part of your system. How wonderful it is that you exist. He goes on to say, for what? The lover, gazing upon his beloved says and means is not how good that you are so clever, useful, capable, skillful, so on. But it's good that you are. How wonderful that you exist! And when you are reunited with the rest of your system, when you're unburdened, when other parts of you are open to you joining in, when you are able to taste and see the goodness of the Lord through the mediation of your innermost self in connection with your innermost self, everything changes. It's a radical shift. And I want you to trust in that. I'm inviting you to trust in that and all of the other parts managers, firefighters, protectors, to know that every part of you is ordained, is designed, is willed by God to be included in that statement. It's wonderful that you exist. Speaker 2: Once again, that was Doctor Peter Malinoski, and listeners can find more content from him on the podcast that he hosts called Interior Integration for Catholics, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to his Semimonthly reflections by going to Souls and hearts.com/content/blog. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again tomorrow. Speaker 1: And with that, we'll draw this to a close by invoking our patroness and our patrons, Our Lady, our mother, Untier of knots, pray for us, Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.