1. Summary -- It is so common for Catholics (and others) to reject the love of God, to not let that love in. Join Dr. Peter for this episode where we explore in depth the eight natural, human formation reasons why we refuse God's love. We also look at what Hell really is and why it really exists. Through examples, quotes, and an exploration of Dr. Peter's own parts, listen to how this critical, central topic comes alive. And then Dr. Peter presents the an action plan for accepting and embracing God's love.

  2. Lead-in

    1. “It’s very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved.” ―Psychiatrist and Harvard Professor George Vaillant (need description)
      1. The Hardest Thing about love for many of us Catholics -- is to be loved. To tolerate being loved first. We can't love unless we take love in first. We can't generate love out of nothing on our own, we don't have that power.
      2. Many Catholics make sacrifices great and small in an attempt to love others.
      3. Many Catholics go to great lengths to try to please God and to love their neighbor -- very busy people, most parishes have a few of these -- always volunteering, working, making things happen, St. Vincent de Paul, soup kitchens, corporal works of mercy -- working so hard to live out the Gospel as they understand it, but it's all external -- they are very out of touch with their internal lives. Their prayer lives are shallow and sketchy and they are uncomfortable in their own skin and they will not tolerate silence.

      4. The vast majority of us Catholics will not tolerate being loved deeply or fully. We shy away from receiving love. We get so uncomfortable, we skirt around the edges of being loved

        1. Or we allow love into us only so far. Only so far. We won't let real love permeate all of our being. We let the quote acceptable unquote parts of us be loved, those parts we allow in our shop window. Those parts we believe others will accept. 4. 1. But to allow someone to love all of you -- your nasty parts, your shameful parts, your disgusting parts, your hidden leper parts, your sinful parts -- those tax collector parts, your inner prostitutes and blasphemers, your Pharisee parts, the parts of you that are so lost and so isolated and so angry and hateful? Those parts? Most of us will say -- No way -- no way does anyone get to see those parts if I can help it, let alone love those parts. How about your terrified parts, your desperate parts, your wounded, traumatized parts, the ones no one wants, the parts of you that have been rejected by everybody, including yourself. 5. 1. This podcast is for us Catholics who understand at least intellectually that we have those parts. And that those parts need to be loved. Those parts also need to be redeemed. 6. 1. For anyone out there who is saying "Well, I don't think I have any parts like that, Dr. Peter. I don't have any problems being loved."

          1. My response to that is one of two possibilities -- either you are:

            1. 1 -- A very special person, who has been freed from our fallen human condition and you've achieved an extraordinary degree of perfection in the natural and spiritual realms -- and if so, congratulations to you. You don't need this podcast and you don't need this episode, you are so far above the rest of us. I'm in awe of you. You don't need what I have to offer. 2. 1. Or 2 -- you don't know yourself very well. You are out of touch with yourself and your parts, disconnected inside. 3. 2. 7.
              1. It's especially hard for us to tolerate being loved by God. That's the primary reason we don't love God back and we don't love our neighbor and we don't love ourselves. We won't be loved first. 1. God loved us first.
              1. It all starts with God's love -- not our love. God loved us first. 1. Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow in his Book Shaken “We were created by Love, in love, and for love.” 2. Paul tells us in Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. 1. God loved us first. 3. 1 John 3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1. The world does not know God. Christianity is the way to discover who God actually is. To discover what Love actually is. 4. John tells us in 1 John 4:9-10 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. 5. This is what I want you to remember. From St. John, 1 John 4:19: St. John tells us: We love because he first loved us 6. And it's up to us to take that love in, to let it reach to every corner of our being. That doesn't sound easy. And it's not as easy as it sounds.
            5. Intro

    3. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, a.k.a. Dr. Peter, clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, podcaster, blogger, cofounder and president of Souls and Hearts -- but most of all I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to experience the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God the Father and our primary Mother Mary. What I want for you more than anything else is that you enter into a deep, intimate, personal, loving relationship with the three Persons of the Trinity and with our Lady. That is what this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast is all about, that is what Souls and Hearts is all about – all about shoring up the natural foundation for the spiritual life of intimacy with God, all about overcoming the natural human formation deficits and obstacles to contemplative union with God our Father and our Lady, our Mother

      1. We are on an adventure of love together. Episode 94 of this podcast focused on the primacy of love in the Catholic life. Episode 95 focused on trauma's devastating impact on our capacity to love. Episode 96 discussed how trauma hardens us against being loved. Episode 97 discussed how trauma predisposes us to self-hatred and indifference, a refusal to love ourselves. And episode 98, the last episode was all about ordered self-love, how we need to love ourselves in an ordered way in order to love God and neighbor, to carry out the two great Commandments. Today were to take a step back were to look at the most critical prerequisite for loving God and others. We are going to discuss being loved the first, accepting the love of God first. This is absolutely essential. The most critical mistake that most Catholics make is to refuse the love of God. Let me say that again. The most critical mistake, the most devastating, catastrophic mistake that most Catholics make is to refuse to allow God's love to transform us entirely, to make us into new men and women.

    6. Let us start out with The order of Loves

    7. God leads with love -- he goes first. God makes the first move. He moves toward us, we who He created, and who have fallen from grace because of original sin. We don't make the first move. God does. He loved us first, and he continues to love us first

      1. Sean Mitchell -- We Love Because He First Loved Us -- Those Catholic Men.

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). These words from the first letter of John beautifully and succinctly sum up the origin and end of the Christian life—which, in a word, is love. “Being Christian,” said Benedict XVI, “is…the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1). That “encounter” is our experience of God “first loving us.” The “new horizon” that it opens up, the “decisive direction” that it gives to our lives, is love—our love of God and our neighbor because of His prior love of us. To participate in that endless exchange of love is what it means to be a Christian. It is the center from which all other aspects of the Christian life emanate. I fear that a significant number of Catholic men miss this point and regard something other than love as the central point of being a follower of Christ.

What I did not include from Benedict’s quote above is what he says being Christian is not. It is not, he says, “the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est). To state that more generally, being Christian isn’t primarily about my will or my intellect and what I do with them (i.e., make “ethical choices” and assent to “lofty ideas”). Rather, it is first and foremost about my heart, my whole person in all its mystery, and what has been done to it by God. Is it not the case, though, that so many of us fail to understand this? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think we would have to admit that it is, that we ourselves are among those men who place something other than love at (or at least close to) the center of our “Christian” life…even if we don’t realize it.

  1. Comment on this

  2. Edward Vacek: Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. The sequence in loving and being loved. (1) God affirms us; (2) God receives us; (3) we accept God’s love; (4) we affirm God; (5) God forms community with us; (6) we cooperate with God in loving God in the world; and finally (7) we grow in a limited co-responsibility with God. p. 177

    1. Genesis 3.
      1. The trauma of original sin.
      2. God comes looking for them -- God seeks them out -- hiding, fleeing from him in their shame and confusion and bitterness, in the trauma of original sin.
      3. God calls out to them -- example of His gentleness.
      4. No cursing of Adam and Eve. The serpent is cursed, the ground is cursed. Not Adam and Eve
      5. Provides clothing for them to help them with their shame.

      6. Protects them from the Tree of Life. Banishing them from the garden was an act of love -- if they had eaten from the tree of life, the

        1. Genesis 3:22- 24 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. 7. 1. God making sure that they won't be separated from Him forever. St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis, 122 explains, “God did this lest this life-giving gift that they would receive through the tree of life become misery, and thus bring worse evil upon them than what they had already obtained from the tree of knowledge. From the latter tree they obtained temporal pains, whereas the former tree would have made those pains eternal. From the latter they obtained death which would have cast off from them the bonds of their pains. The former tree, however, would have caused them to live as if buried alive, leaving them to be tortured eternally by their pains.”
          1. The basic problem with the sequence -- not tolerating enough contact with God to be affirmed, for Him to receive us. to understand Him in a radically different way.
        4. And what kind of love is God's love for us? God Himself tells us: I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31:3. God is faithful to us. He loves with an everlasting love.
          1. Isaiah 54.10 For the mountains may depart

and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,

says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

  1. How steadfast is God's love: Deuteronomy 7:9 tells us. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations

  2. Psalm 86:5 For thou, O Lord, art good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee.

    1. God requires a response from us. -- abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee. We have to call on him, we have to respond to the love.
      1. That is what this episode is all about. This is episode 99 of the Interior Integration for Catholic podcast, released on November 7, 2022 titled IIC 99 Why We Catholics Reject God's Love for Us and How to Embrace that Love
      1. CCC 221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love": [1 John 4:8, 16] God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
      1. We have to take him up on that.

    6. How do we know we are loved by God? -- 2 ways. Faith and lived experience

    7. Faith Infused virtue

      1. CCC 150 Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.
      2. CCC 153 When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven".24 Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'"25
      1. Lived experience of the relationship with God.
      2. 2 Timothy 1:12 But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.
      3. Can feel it in consolations.
      4. We don't want to engineer emotional experiences of closeness, manipulating emotions --
        1. Concern about Catholic youth events, hyper emotional, noisy and using psychological techniques of influence to generated contrived emotional experiences. Hyping people up, getting them out of their window of tolerance.

      1. We don't want to rely on our subjective experience of lived relationship

      2. Because the subjective experience of connection with God can vary way too much.

          1. Von Hildebrand writes, “Our confidence in God must be independent of whether we experience His nearness, whether we sense the enlivening touch of grace, whether we feel ourselves being born on the wings of His love.” (p 210).
          1. Mother Teresa

        3. 1957 confided to spiritual director: In the darkness . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The child of your love — and now become as the most hated one. The one — you have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer . . . Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love — the word — it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. 2. 1. David Scott in chapter 17 of his book The Love That Made Mother Teresa wrote: For more than fifty years following her initial visions and locutions, Mother Teresa was wrapped in a dark, pitiless silence. She only once more heard the voice of God, and she believed the doors of heaven had been closed and bolted against her. The more she longed for some sign of his presence, the more empty and desolate she became. 4.

        5. Needs

    10. Weekly Reflection: from September 6, 2022: The Top 10 Needs That Fuel Modern-Day Idol Worship go to soulsandhearts.com/blog

      1. Integrity Needs

      2. My need to exist and survive

          1. My need to matter
          1. My need to have agency
          1. My need to be good
          1. My need for mission and purpose in life
        1. Attachment needs --Brown and Elliott (2016)

      4. Felt sense of safety and protection -- have to go through the valley of shame, fear, anger, grief

          1. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood -- have to tolerating being in relationship, being present.
          1. Feeling comforted, soothed and reassured
          1. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in
          1. Feeling the other has your best interests at heart
      6. Resistance to being loved

    12. Weaving in Integrity needs and attachment needs.

      1. Main themes

      2. Limited vision and lack of imagination, leading to a refusal to be transformed by God

          1. We don't understand God's love
          1. The Costs of Being Loved by God
          1. Poor God images
          1. Poor Self images -- Shame
          1. Refusal to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be revealed to God.
          1. Lack of courage.
          1. Anger at God -- rebellion
        1. Limited vision and lack of imagination, leading to a refusal to be transformed by God -- unhealthy satisfaction in far more limited spiritual goals -- a willingness to settle. Von Hildebrand

      4. According to von Hildebrand, the vision of most Catholics is way too narrow – our sights are set way too low. We are satisfied with too little in the spiritual life – we are like chickens pecking at the ground when we are called to soar as eagles. We may be content with merely avoiding sin, overcoming vices and developing virtues. Some of us may pursue the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, satisfied with incremental gains Weekly reflection October 26, 2022 -- Why we resist change – and especially radical transformation.

        1. Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children character Jacob Portman “One day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered."
        2. Love, in some sense, is nothing other than an invitation to great joy and suffering, so they shy away from it. Paul Catalanotto Refusal to love is also refusal to live The Catholic Weekly
          1. John 6: 41-42 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
      5. John 6: vs. 60 and 66 Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
        1. We don't understand God's love

      7. Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

          1. Sharon Jaynes When Love Hurts April 17, 2018. Proverbs31.org

“Mommy, Mommy,” Steven cried. “Don’t let them hurt me!”

My son, Steven, was about 3 years old when he contracted a severe case of the flu. His slumped body snuggled listlessly like an old, worn rag doll.

When I carried him into the medical clinic, the doctor quickly diagnosed dehydration and immediately sent us to the hospital.

My heart ripped apart as the nurses strapped my little boy onto a table and began placing IVs in his tiny arms.

“Mommy, Mommy,” Steven cried. “Make them stop! They’re hurting me.”

“No, honey,” I tried to assure him. “They’re going to make you all better.”

“Mommy, help me!”

Steven cried. I cried. The nurses cried.

I could only imagine what was going through Steven’s little mind. Why are these people hurting me? Why doesn’t Mommy make them stop? She must not love me. She’s not protecting me. If she loved me she wouldn’t let them do this. She must not care about me.

Standing in the corner watching my little boy cry, I wondered if that’s how God feels when I’m going through a painful situation that’s for my ultimate good. I cried out, “God, why are You letting this happen? Don’t You love me? Don’t You care about what’s happening to me? Why don’t You make it stop?”

  1. Can see the need to exist here being threatened.
    1. I might be very injured, I might die. Integrity need
  2. No felt sense of being protected -- attachment need. In fact, just the opposite. The little child was being protected, but didn't understand, didn't feel it.
  3. No felt sense of being comforted or soothed, child not open to it. Third primary condition of secure attachment
  4. No felt sense of support for his highest good. Fifth condition of secure attachment.
  5. Parts of us very young, like this 3-year-old.

  6. Hebrews 12:11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

    1. Poor view of discipline

      1. Bad experiences of being disciplined -- not having been disciplined out of love
          1. But rather out of anger or inconvenience or frustration. 3.
        1. Freud -- gratification and frustration to grow.
      4. The Costs of Being Loved by God

    2. Real love, agape or charity, is always given freely -- we understand that much

      1. But real love, agape, charity -- real love is never received freely in this fallen world.
          1. There is a cost to allowing real love into our lives. 3.
        1. Very little discussion about the costs of being loved by God. I find that so strange. So many Catholics don't think this way. It is as though Catholics have parts that believe that being loved by God is one of two things

      3. Being loved by God should easy, delightful, peaceful --

        1. like being the lead character a Hallmark movie
        2. Romance novels. Easy love that just come naturally. Emotional Junk food that nourishes illusions.
        3. and when it's not, they conclude that God isn't loving them, or that they are excluded from His love
          1. Being loved by God is terrible

        5. Echoes of Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 3.

          1. Burning away

      4. Real love -- Agape -- burns away things that are sinful within us -- it doesn't coexist with the vice within us.

          1. Real love also purifies us from anything that is not morally wrote, but that is disordered or dysfunctional or imperfect
          1. Real love is the greatest good. And because it's the greatest good, it requires us to give up lesser goods. Perceived good and actual goods.
        3. Coping strategies, crutches that helped us in the past
        4. Analogy of the safe -- limited room, silver and gold.
          1. 1 Peter 1:7 So that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
          1. Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
          1. Zechariah 13:9 And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
          1. Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.
          1. Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
          1. Integrity needs

        11. I exist 2. 1. I matter 3. 1. I am good

            1. Attachment needs

        12. Felt safety and protection 2. 1. Felt comfort and reassurance 3. 1. Felt sense of being cherished and delighted in. No experience of that while being corrected, perfected. 4. 11.

          1. xThe cost is up front -- the benefit in the future.
        15. Poor God images

    3. We don't understand God. We don't know who he is. -- reflected in the Sharon Jaynes' story of her son at the doctor's office.

      1. Lack of confidence in God. Lack of Faith

      1. God Images = My emotional and subjective experiences of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is. What I feel about God in my bones. This is my experiential sense how my feelings and how my heart interpret God.

      2. Each part, not in right relationship with the innermost self, has a distorted God image.

          1. God images are often unconscious.
          1. Initially God images are shaped by the relationship that I have with my parents.
          1. My God images are heavily influenced by psychological factors
          1. Different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at a given time.
          1. God images are always formed experientially;

        6. God images flow from our relational experiences and 2. 1. Also how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young. 3.

            1. My God images can be radically different than my God concept.
            1. We all have heretical God images.
            1. Differ from God Concept = What I profess about God. It is my more intellectual understanding of God, based on what one has been taught, but also based on what I have explored through reading. I decide to believe in my God concept. Reflected in the Creed, expanded in the Catechism, formal teaching.
            1. Can take a while to get to these God images -- not on the surface
            1. We don't know God very well.
          6. We refuse Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons And Everyday Spirituality : Allow people to love you as they must love you, not as you want them to love you. Even God does not love us as we wish Him to. Learning to love is learning to accept love as it comes.
          7. I will lose the relationship with God that I have if I push the envelope

      3. And you will. That is true.

        2. Episodes 37-49 on God images.
        3. Really hits on attachment needs.
      4. Poor Self images -- Shame

    6. Self-images are much more emotionally driven, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment.

      1. Each part, not in right relationship with the innermost self, has a distorted self image.
      1. Pastor Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hand of an angry God, 1740s “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire ... you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.”
      1. Hiding from God.
      2. Genesis 3.
      1. I don't want to find out I am unlovable. I can't bear that.
      1. Episode 24 of this podcast, God images and self images.
      1. Really hits on integrity needs. Especially the need to be good.
    14. Refusal to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be revealed to God.

    15. Because for love to be real, for love to be agape means me allowing you to love all of me. All my parts. My entire being

      1. Not just the acceptable parts of me in the shop window, those that I allow others to see.

        2. Fears of being hurt one more time --

      2. Fears of betrayal

          1. Fears of abandonment
        2. We think we can hide.
        3. Self protection -- need to survive. Need to be good.
      3. Lack of courage.

    16. Philophobia -- fear of love All of us have parts that fear love.

      1. Comfort in the familiarity of the dysfunction we know.
      2. Predictability
      3. Change is scary
        1. Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse “For change to occur in us, we must be willing to enter the wilderness of the unknown and to wander in unfamiliar territory, directionless and often in the darkness....We do not need to keep every little thing under control. In fact, we find ourselves only by allowing some falling apart to happen.”
        2. Erica Jong: I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
        3. Nelson Mandela: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
    18. Anger at God, Rebellion against Him. secondary to poor God images. Anger is the ordered emotion in response to injustice.

    19. What is a part?

    20. Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God.

      1. When parts are not integrated, under the leadership and guidance of my innermost self

      2. Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader. 2.

        1. Parts in greater detail -- discussed my parts in Episode 71 A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others.
      4. Good Boy
      5. Evaluator (formerly "the Critic")
      6. Melancholio
      7. Adventurer (formerly my "part who holds fear")
      8. Feisty One (formerly my "angry part")
      9. Challenger (formerly "the Rebel")
      10. Lover Part
      11. Collaborator Parts (formerly my Competent Part)
      12. Guardian (formerly "the Intimidator")
      13. Creative Part
      15. Consequences -- Hell

    22. Nothing can separate us from God's love.

      1. Romans 8:38-39 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
      2. Nothing can separate you from the love of God, not even demons -- angel and principalities. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. With one exception. You.
      3. Only you can separate you from the love of God. Only you have the power to do that, by refusing to let that love come it. That's what sin is. It's separating ourselves from God. Sin is damaging our relationship with God.

      1. Separation happens

      2. Jesus weeping over Jerusalem Luke 19:41-44 And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.

        1. It's not that God won't protect Jerusalem. It's that he could not protect the Israelites, not without violating their freedom, not without forcing Himself on them. 2.
            1. Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
          1. Pope John Paul II in a 1999 audience, God did not create Hell. Hell “… is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life.”

      3. Catechism of the Catholic Church edited by Archbishop Rino Fisichella 2019 by Our Sunday Visitor Louis Ladaria: To be precise, God did not make Hell. His free creatures make it, inasmuch as they separate themselves from Him. Nor does God send anyone to Hell: it is the damned one who separates himself and does not want to enter into the Father's house. God, St. Irenaeus said, does not really look to punish the damned, but as they are deprived of all good things, it is the penalty that pursues them (Adversus Haereses, V. 27, 2; a similar idea in St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 5, 10: God abandons the sinner to his evil, he does not, properly speaking, give evil to anyone). Because of this, and despite what is said sometimes, we need to insist on the fact that Hell does not say anything against the infinite goodness of God. (p. 863).

          1. Dean Koontz: The Book of Counted Sorrows: “We make Hell real; we stoke its fires. // And in its flames our hope expires.
          1. CCC 30 Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness.

      4. CCC 1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

        1. Not trying to catch us, not with a hand on the trap door to hell. 3. 4. Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC “Ask a Priest: If God loves us so much, why does hell exist?” An analogy might help. Imagine you are on a ship that is searching for survivors from a sunken ocean liner. You see a passenger struggling in the waves behind you. You throw a lifeline to him, but he refuses to grab it. You beg him to take hold of the lifeline, but he ignores your plea. Eventually, he sinks below the waves and drowns. Does his drowning indicate that you were indifferent? When you begged him to grab the lifeline, were you displaying hate? Was his drowning your fault? The answer to all these questions is: no. The person in the water, for whatever reason, refused your help. His drowning was the consequence.

        2. It doesn't matter why we flee from God and why we flee from His love. 5.

          1. Hell as isolation -- cut off from everyone. 1. Images of hell 2. Hell as isolation

        4. Tekla Babyak in 2018 article Dante, Liszt and the alienated agon of hell writes: Dante Alighieri’s Inferno portrays Hell as an alienated realm in which the doomed spirits must spend eternity in isolation and regret. 3. 4. Deepest level of hell, the ninth circle:

        5. "The treacheries of these souls were denials of love (which is God) and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures. As they denied God's love, so are they furthest removed from the light and warmth of His Sun. As they denied all human ties, so are they bound only by the unyielding ice." John Ciardi, Inferno, notes on Canto XXXII, p. 248
        6. Satan encased waist deep in ice. Not fire. 5. Celeste Ng Little Fires Everywhere character of Mia Warren “In all her years of itinerant living, Mia had developed one rule: Don’t get attached to any place, to any apartment, to anything. To anyone.”
          1. In Hell on earth

      5. Fragmentation of Dante's inferno -- lived now.

          1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Life Together “Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he comes involved in it, the more disastrous his isolation.”
          1. Sharon M. Draper Out of My Mind character Melody Brooks “It’s like I live in a cage with no door and no key. And I have no way to tell someone how to get me out.”
          1. Sue Johnson Hold Me Tight “Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response.”
          1. C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce: “That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
      7. Action Plan

    24. Pray

      1. Set aside the time. First thing

          1. Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Fathers' Love Fr. Thomas Acklin and Fr. Boniface Hicks. Benedictines, very wise, good grasp of psychology.
          1. Prayer Primer or Fire Within Fr. Thomas Dubay
          1. Read the first letter of John. Lectio Divina

        4. Dan Burke Spiritual Direction.com Lectio Divina, A Guide: What it is & How It helps Prayer Life 2. 1. Appendix on Lectio Divina in Fr. Jacques Philippe's book Called to Life 3. 1. Section on Lectio Divina titled "mediating on Scripture in Fr. Jacques Philippe's book Thirsting for Prayer

            1. Nike Model -- just do it. Set aside perfectionism, desire to do it well.

        5. You're not going to do it well. You're going to do it badly. 2. 1. The most important things in life we either do badly or we don't do at all. 3. 1. St. Therese of Avila. says: “He who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands.” 4. 1. St. John of the Cross says: “Without the aid of mental prayer, the soul cannot triumph over the forces of the demon.” 5. 1. St. Teresa of Avila “Prayer is an exercise of love.” (Life 7:12) 6. 6.

          1. Do your human formation work

      2. Relational spirituality -- about relationship

          1. Any difficulties you have in relationships in the natural realm, here on earth -- you are going to bring into your spiritual relationships.
          1. Interior integration

        3. Why is interior integration crucial for union with God? Weekly reflection October 12, 2022 soulsandhearts.com/blog. 2. 1. Get to know your parts

          1. Reason for not praying 3. 1. Jay Earley -- Self Therapy Vol. 1. Now in the Third Edition. Bonnie Weiss Self-Therapy Workbook. 4.
              1. Means

        4. Therapy or counseling -- especially Internal Family Systems therapy with a therapist who is Catholic or who at least respects your Catholic Faith and will not undermine it. 2. 1. Experiential Exercise -- November 21. Splitting those out. 3. 1. Resilient Catholic Community -- you do not have to be alone.

          1. Reopening December 1 -- new cohort
          2. Get to know your parts
          3. I've brought together the best
          4. Wait list -- email on November 10. Sign up soulsandhearts.com/rcc
          5. If interested, contact me.
            1. Crisis@soulsandhearts.com
            2. 317.567.9594 conversation hours 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time Every Tuesday and Thursday. (not November 17 -- online conference). 4. 5.
          1. Pray for me
          1. Sent the word out. Let people know about our offerings at Souls and Hearts, this podcast, the weekly reflections. Sign up for those - email. Can see the archive at soulsandhearts.com/blog
        7. Patroness and Patron

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