Transcript
Speaker 1: Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us. God sent his only son into the world so that we might have life through him.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's Friday, June 12th, 2026. The solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. I'll be providing the reflection for today's episode. My name is Elizabeth and I'm the producer and host of Scripture for your inner outcast.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone. It's good to be back with you today on this solemnity of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. We have so much richness in the readings today, and it was really hard to pick just a few verses to reflect on, notably in the gospel. Jesus says, although you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, you have revealed them to little ones. And while that verse is so ripe for the picking for an IFS podcast related to our little ones, our inner outcasts. I'm actually not going to reflect on that verse, but I do want to point it out so that if you are attending mass today, if you're meditating upon the readings, you might consider reflecting on that verse on your own because there's a lot of fruit there. Instead, I want to focus in on a line from the second reading today, which comes from the first letter of John, chapter four. John says, whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us. God sent his only son into the world so that we might have life through him. And then later on he says, beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. This verse really emotionally hit me in particular today, because here Saint John the Evangelist is giving us the mandate to love each other.
Speaker 1: And he also gives us the reason why we need to love each other. And that's because God loves us. God loves us, so we pay it forward and love others. And this message is so wrapped up in the great commandment love your God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself. And so while we're commanded to love others, our love of others is contingent upon upon how much we can love ourselves, which means how much we can love each of the parts of us and our inner outcasts, our exiled parts, our young, childlike parts that carry so much emotion and burdens that are too heavy for them to carry, such that our other parts cast them out of our system for our own protection. Those parts need to be loved as well. This reading doesn't say we must also love one another, except our exiled parts. That's not what this reading says. We have to love one another. We have to love all the parts of us unconditionally. Because God is love and God loves us first. And so I was thinking about one of my own exiled parts, or a formerly exiled part that has been and is still currently really difficult for me to love. It's a sad part. I just call it my sad part.
Speaker 1: And it used to be exiled in my system. I used to have really very little feeling of sadness. I was driven by a, um, managerial forced optimism in life. But every once in a while the sad part would peek through and I would just totally crash and totally hit a wall of overwhelming sadness. And it would last for like three days. And then the exile would get shoved back down again because the sadness was not welcome in my system. It was not loved. There was no space for it. It was too scary, too overwhelming. And lately, over the last about two weeks of my life, I've noticed the sad part has been really present to me. It's no longer exiled, and I know that because I can. I can feel this. This deep sadness. A lot more often than I used to. And when I do feel it, it's not quite as overwhelming, but it's still there. So this sweet little part in me is no longer exiled, but it's also not unburdened. And so reading these verses today, whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. If God so loved us, we must also love one another. It's like a reminder to me, in my innermost self that I need to love my sad part, who was formerly exiled but is still very sad.
Speaker 1: And when I asked this part, how do you need to be loved? She basically just says, I. I need somebody to be with me, I need to listen to and I need relationship. And I don't have a full grasp on her story, but I strongly suspect she was without relationship and without a listening ear for the time before she became burdened. And so I just want to share that this is what today's mass readings bring up in me, is a reminder that I need to love my sad part, and the way that she is asking for me to love her is simply to be with her and to listen to her story, which is what many of our exiles need from us. They need the relationship. They need the being with. If you're enjoying the content of this podcast, if you're a Catholic who wants to deepen their human formation, then the resilient Catholics community might be a good fit for you. We're accepting applications for the most recent cohort, named after Saint Mary Magdalene, from June 1st to June 30th, 2026. Learn more in the description of today's episode. With that, we'll end with our invocations. Our Lady, our mother. Untier of knots. Pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist pray for us.
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