Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

"My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."

Welcome to Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, the Memorial of Saint Scholastica. Today we are joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Peter Malinoski, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts and host of our sister podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics.

Dr. Peter Malinoski here. It is so good to be with you. We are looking at Psalm 84, focusing on verse two. "My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." This is February 10th, 2026, the memorial of Saint Scholastica. And I just hear the yearning, the crying out of exiles. So often our managers, they're not crying out for the living God. If they are blended, if they are driven by agendas, they've got another focus. Or maybe better put, they don't know that they're substituting something else for God. They're seeking God, but they're seeking him in a distorted way. Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician and physicist and inventor and philosopher. Deep Catholic faith, he writes, "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Yet after so many years, no one without faith has reached the goal." "My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." This is a desire that is in all of us. And back 3 or 4 days ago, on February 7th, I discussed this in the context of exiles desiring redemption.

British journalist and conservative Malcolm Muggeridge said, "sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th century." So many times our exiles are looking for what they need, attachment needs being met, integrity needs being met, identity questions being resolved. They're looking for something in the natural realm, something they're already familiar with. So many times you exiles are not connected very well to your faculty of imagination. There's a limitation in how much you can imagine that you haven't already experienced. And there's an invitation here in this Psalm, as your heart, as your flesh is crying out, as you exiles are crying out, to reconceptualize and to search for the One who can actually meet those needs. As unbelievable as that might be for your exiles, as unbelievable as that might be, because of your negative or toxic God images. God is not who exiles, who are not in right relationship with the innermost self, God is not who you think he is. And so to maybe have some openness here, and maybe to cooperate and collaborate in encountering God as he is, that cooperation, collaboration among all the parts in your system.

Many of our parts carry distorted and untrue perceptions of who God is. And these are sometimes called God images. If you'd like to learn more about this concept, I'd recommend you check out our sister podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics episodes 23 through 29, which is linked in the description of today's show.

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.