233 You Belong to A Community
Transcript
Speaker 1: Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large number of people. And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's April 28th, 2026, Tuesday of the fourth week of Easter. 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.
Speaker 1: Hello again everyone. In this fourth week of Easter, we continue to move through the acts of the apostles in our mass readings for each day. And today we read from acts chapter 11 an account of Barnabas and the early church. It says, Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large number of people. And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians. So the literal reading of these scripture verses is giving us a history lesson of what was taking place in the early church. But the moral reading that I would like to suggest for these particular verses is that we need each other here in the entire book of acts of the apostles, but particularly in these verses that I just read. We see examples of the apostles going out and finding people, converting them to Christianity, and then those people converting others to Christianity. And it's this ripple effect. I find all this really interesting, and it can be metaphorical for each of our own internal journeys. So in the psychological modality of internal family systems, which this podcast follows from a Catholic lens. We believe that each of us is made up of a multiplicity of personalities, which we would call parts, and these parts can be broken down into three categories manager parts, firefighter parts, and exiled parts. In this podcast, we focus on the exiled parts, which another way of saying that is your inner outcast, the inner lepers of your internal society, if you will.
Speaker 1: And so for these inner outcasts who are listening, those parts and the audience here, I invite you to consider that you belong to a community. You belong to a community inside yourself. You are not alone, and you also belong to a community in the broader church. And just like in these readings, we see a particular disciple of Jesus, Barnabas, traveling with Saul and then moving to Antioch, speaking with the early members of the church there, presumably converting people and receiving the title of Christians Followers of Christ. So we see this great example of community and expansion and a ripple effect of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. And so I'd like to pose a hypothesis to any inner outcasts that are listening right now that just like in the early church, you are not alone. You are part of a community. There's a ripple effect of people who love you outside of your internal system, of people who love you. In the broader church, which includes the church, triumphant saints in heaven who love you dearly, and you're also part of a community inside your own internal system. You have major parts and firefighter parts that love you dearly and want to protect you. And because of the fallen nature of humanity, Because not everyone is good because of original sin. They don't always protect you in a virtuous way. And sometimes your manager parts and your firefighter parts actually hurt you.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people outside of your internal system hurt you. And sometimes people in the broader church hurt you. And that's not your fault. They are not perfect. Your other parts are not perfect, and that's not your fault. But the other parts in your system and also the people external to your system, and especially the broader church at large, many of them really want to do what is right for you, even though they're sinful, even though they make mistakes, even though they don't always love you in a virtuous way or rightly ordered way, they want what is best for you. And we can acknowledge that good intention that they have. I imagine that when Barnabas and Saul were evangelizing the people of Antioch in, as it is recorded in acts of the apostles, I imagine they didn't say everything correctly. They probably ruffled some feathers and hurt some feelings. But at the end of the day, the Holy Spirit worked through their imperfections and brought about great fruit. And I'd like to pose that as a metaphor to your own internal experience, that there can still be fruit from imperfect loving, and there can still be fruit, even from suffering. If today's episode resonates with you, you can find similar content at Souls and hearts.com/content. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you again tomorrow. 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.
