Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

"When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and those who are crushed in spirit he saves."

Welcome back to Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. Today is February 24th, 2026, Tuesday of the First Week of Lent. 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.

It is so good to be back with you. This is Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, and I'm focusing on our responsorial psalm, Psalm 34, particularly verses 6 and 18. "When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress, he saved him. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and those who are crushed in spirit, he saves." Now, exiles, you might know this, you might not. But sometimes our spiritual managers try to impose a particular way, particular means to bring you to love, or to light, or to God. If those spiritual managers are blended, they won't be attuned to you because they're not your innermost self. They actually, on their own, do not have the capacity to really understand you or to really help you, even though they may be trying their best to seek some good thing. And one of the tragic ironies of being an exile is that you exiles are often the most trusting of parts, initially. The most sensitive of parts, the most childlike of parts, the parts that had the greatest sense of awe, of wonder, of just this innocence. And when something overwhelming happened, you had to take on the burden of that. And not only take on the burden of it, but you had to keep that from flooding through the rest of the system. You were called into that role. And it was more than any part could bear.

Right. So you may have felt burned. You may have felt taken advantage of. You may have felt exploited, as you took on that burden, feeling like that burden was imposed on you. Or maybe you took it on more voluntarily, like a sense of you have to do this. And then you got condemned for it. You got banished for it by your protector parts. And it can be really hard to believe what our Lord is telling us in Psalm 34, "When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him." So often you exiles are calling out, you're attempting to communicate. That could be verbally, could be nonverbally, could be through symptoms, could be through all kinds of trailheads. And there's a yearning that so many exiles have to believe that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit, he saves. It can be that the innermost self can be so blended that it's not yet possible or likely that there'll be a connection with God that extends to you. It also might be that you're really afraid of God, or that you're really angry at God, or that you're really disappointed at God. All kinds of God images come in here. Sometimes it can feel like these verses just don't resonate with you.

But here's where we need the clarity of Scripture. Parts that are not in right relationship with the innermost self, parts that are on their own, parts that are banished, parts that are exiled. They don't have the clarity in their subjective experience to really understand God. That's why we trust in Scripture. That's why we trust in what the church teaches. So we can hold this to be true, even if we don't feel it to be true yet. And if we can hold on to that, if you can access the faith that's within you and ask for more faith, if you seek, you will find. And so now I'm going to turn my attention to managers. Let's let these exiles experience God's response. Let's not keep God away from our exiles. Let's not hide them in the back room, in the basement. Let's not hide them in a dungeon. Let's have a little confidence in God, that he actually means what he says, that he saves the poor ones from their distress, that he is close to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit he saves. Let's work together on this. Let's have some cooperation, collaboration under the leadership and guidance of your innermost self. And with that, please know that I pray for all you listeners of the Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts podcast.

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 will 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.