Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

"When Solomon was old, his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the Lord his God, as the heart of his father David had been. By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Malcolm, the idol of the Amorites, Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not follow him unreservedly, as his father David had done."

Welcome to Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. Today is February 12th, 2026, Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time. Today's guest presenter is Doctor John Bruchalski, an OB/GYN based in Northern Virginia and the author of the book Two Patients with Ignatius Press.

Today's reflection comes from our first reading from the First Book of Kings, chapter 11, verses 4 through 13. "When Solomon was old, his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the Lord his God, as the heart of his father David had been. By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Malcolm, the idol of the Amorites, Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not follow him unreservedly, as his father David had done." Do those phrases, "he was not entirely with the Lord, as the heart of his father David had been," and the second, "he did not follow him unreservedly, as his father David had done," resonate with you? Were there members of your family that your parents or caregivers compared you to, that made you feel you were not enough, falling short of a standard? You might feel the anger, the shame, or the "I'm not enough" pain when you hear these verses because someone close to you, possibly within your family, consciously or unconsciously compared you to another family member or close acquaintance or friend. Oh, you were just less organized, not as considerate, more lazy, less holy. Obviously, you should be more like them. You heard, I'm not good enough. Not worthy enough. With repetition, maybe deep within you, you began to hate yourself. Maybe deep within you, you began to harbor shame for causing this problem within your family. Maybe deep within you, you felt you're not enough to matter to your parents, to yourself, or maybe even to God. Now, all of these emotions are understandable, as our childhood selves do not have the experience and wisdom to metabolize these words, these pains, these wounds, except by having other parts of you protect you from these emotionally powerful and traumatic assumptions and wounds we have come to know as our inner outcasts.

However, remember that parts work of human formation comes before and is the foundation for your spiritual formation. The prophet Jeremiah, the traditionally attributed author of the first Book of Kings, hinted at it in these verses. "His heart was not entirely with the Lord." For your heart to be entirely with you, every one of your parts, including the exiles that are our inner outcasts, must be unburdened of their pain or shame or anger, as well as all of our protector parts and their extreme roles that are protecting our inner outcasts from flooding us with those traumatic emotions and feelings from our wounds. Parts work of human formation in the RCC and Souls and Hearts brings all of our parts into right relationship with our truest, deepest, innermost self through the curiosity and compassion of listening and learning, of loving each part and their stories. Once this hard work is done over a lifetime, your hearts can experience that being with entirely with the Lord that Jeremiah says, and doing this human formation work will then enable you to live with real surrender and emptiness of all those obstacles in your life, that we are put here by our God, our Lord, to be on pilgrimage that forms us, to follow him unreservedly. Parts work is indeed the key to your spiritual work.

The Resilient Catholics Community is open to new applications for our latest cohort, the Saint Luke cohort, for the entire month of February. Listeners are invited to apply by visiting soulsandhearts.com/rcc.

So let's 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.