293 Has God Cast You Off Forever?

Transcript Speaker 1: Lord, forget not the souls of your poor ones. Why? Oh, God, have you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your flock, which you built up of old. The tribe you redeemed as your inheritance, Mount Zion, where you took up your abode. You are listening to Scripture for your inner outcasts. Today is June 27th, 2026, Saturday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time. I'll be providing today's reflection. I'm Elizabeth, and I'm the producer and host of this show. This podcast is for the inner outcasts, meaning the parts of you in our audience that are the proverbial lepers or the proverbial tax collectors of your own system, the parts of you that are just so. Bad or icky to the rest of your system to be fully brought in to the fold, to have full conscious contributions to your daily life. And so to you, inner outcasts, or in internal family systems terms, we would call you exiled parts. The Responsorial Psalm from today's mass really seems to be speaking to you. It's Psalm 74 and I'm going to quote verses one and two. Lord, forget not the souls of your poor ones. Why? O God, have you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your flock, which you built up of old, the tribe you redeemed as your inheritance, Mount Zion, where you took up your abode. Speaker 1: You can really hear the desperation in this psalm. Forget not the souls of your poor ones. Why, O God, have you cast us off forever? You hear the desperation and the pleading of Israel speaking to their Lord. And it strikes me as so sad. It strikes me that the lived and felt experience of the psalmist was feeling cast off forever by God. And that's a terrifyingly dark place to be. And it strikes me that that's also likely the feeling of many of you exiled parts. You might feel like you have been cast off forever, cast off or cast out to become an inner outcast, cast off from God, from your earthly parents, from your innermost self. You have been exiled. And so today's Psalm might have a special resonance with you who feel exiled. The psalm says, Lord, forget not the souls of your poor ones. It's pleading like, don't forget me, don't forget me. And that might be a cry that many of you have you exiled parts. And so I think there's a lesson in this psalm for you, the exiles, that you can pray about your despair, and you can pray about your lived experience to God. You can tell him, why have you cast me off forever? Don't forget me. You can tell him exactly how you're feeling. Speaker 1: Just like the psalmist does. If your lived experience is feeling like God has abandoned you, you can tell him that. And if you have a major part in your system that is a spiritual bypass or part or a Christian or Catholic standard bearer part, that major part might try to shut you down and telling the truth of your experience, because that major part might feel like it's not safe to tell God that I feel cast out. So if it resonates with you, I want you to take courage in this Psalm. You're not the only one who's ever felt cast off from God and from other relationships. And you also have the power and the freedom to tell God exactly how you're feeling. Thanks for joining us today. If you're getting a lot out of this podcast, if you really feel like these ideas resonate with you, then you might be a good fit for souls and hearts as resilient Catholics. Community. Registration for the June cohort, named after Saint Mary Magdalene, closes on June 30th, and the programing for that cohort will begin in September of 2026. You can find out more in the description of today's show. And 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.