282 God Desires Justice for the Sins Committed Against You

Transcript Speaker 1: Jesus said to his disciples, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly father. For he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. You are listening to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's June 16th, 2026, Tuesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time. 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. Hello everyone. In today's gospel reading, we hear an often repeated verse, Matthew chapter five, verses 43 to 45. Jesus said to his disciples, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly father. For he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This is a really difficult commandment to live out and to live out well. Now you who are listening to this podcast are most likely manager parts. You run the day to day operations of your life, including deciding when and which podcast to listen to. Speaker 1: So to you, manager parts, I'm wondering if you might filter this message that I'm about to say down to your exiled parts if it feels like they could handle it. So now to the exiled parts who are listening right now. I'd like to ask you, who are your enemies and what does it practically look like to pray for them? Your enemy is anyone who has caused an injustice to you, and that injustice could be real, or it could be perceived. But regardless, it feels real to you. Your enemy could be a real bad guy in the world, or it could also be someone close to you, a parent or a sibling, or your spouse. A person could feel like your enemy in one moment and then feel like your hero in the next. So your enemy is not necessarily a 100% bad guy, so to speak. So what does it mean to pray for your enemy? If you're perfectly integrated or perfectly virtuous or perfectly aligned with God's will, than to pray for your enemy means to beg God to forgive them their sins against you, and to ask for God's grace and mercy to come to that person. And even if you're not perfectly integrated, virtuous, or aligned with God's will, such a prayer is still very possible. But here's the thing. Speaker 1: You are not perfectly integrated or virtuous or aligned with God's will. And that's okay. Neither am I or anyone else who's ever existed. Except, of course, for Our Lady and our Lord. And because of that, praying for God's mercy towards a person whom you feel has wronged, you can sometimes feel painful or hurtful, wrong, or at least inauthentic. And so I want to suggest a different way of praying for your enemies. A way that I want to warn you might feel like a radical departure from what you already know. Perhaps pray that God will bring justice to your enemies. Now, I realize that could sound really scary to some parts. Whether to you manage our parts, listening, or to you exiled parts. So let me explain what I mean. If you, who have been burdened and wounded by others carry anger towards those others, then God knows this already. He knows you. He knows the pain you carry, and also your anger and your desire for justice. So if you have a felt sense of wanting justice or wanting punishment to come to your enemies. Telling that to your father in prayer is good. It's good because it's honest and it brings you into closer relationship with your heavenly father. You're not going to surprise him with the strength of your emotions because he knows them already. And believe it or not, God desires justice for you even more than you desire it for yourself. Speaker 1: Because justice flows from God, and any act of injustice hurts him more than it hurts its victim. And so if you ask God to punish your enemies, he can and he will do it according to what is perfectly just. In fact, the punishment that God chooses to give to your enemies for their crimes against you, whether real or perceived, will be a more effective punishment than anything you could do or say to punish them yourself. And so when Jesus commands us to pray for our enemies, you enter. Outcast might consider praying for your enemies to be brought to justice and let God handle the details of what that looks like. Speaking for myself here, I have found in my own life that praying this prayer greatly releases my exiled parts, burdens of anger, and in the end, helps conform my parts to the will of God by giving up my own ability to punish and entrusting the punishment entirely to God. I find that my inner outcasts actually have a lighter burden to carry. For further exploration of the parts of you that carry anger. Check out our sister podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics episodes 103 to 113. 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.