Transcript

Speaker 1: Jesus said to his disciples, do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets. Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. Today is June 23rd, 2026, Tuesday of the 12th week in Ordinary Time. Today's episode will be slightly different than usual, and I'll explain that in a second. But for the time being, I will be providing the beginning of today's reflection. My name is Elizabeth and I'm the producer and host of this show. So today I'd like to focus in on the gospel reading, which comes from Matthew chapter seven. Jesus said to his disciples, due to others, whatever you would have them do to you, this is the law and the prophets. So here it is, the Golden Rule everybody. It's really similar to God's great commandment love your neighbor as yourself. Do to others, whatever you would have them do to you. You see the similarity there? Off the bat, this seems like kind of an easy and intuitive commandment to live out due to others. Whatever you would have them do to you. When I think about this in my own life, I tend to have a major part that expects perfection out of others, but does not expect perfection out of myself. This major part would say others should do to me what they would have done to themselves, but it's willing to give me a lot of passes on living this particular commandment out.

Speaker 1: I'd like to make the argument that this commandment, due to others, whatever you would have them do to you, also applies to our parts inside of us. Our manager parts should treat our firefighter and our exile parts in the same way that they would like to be treated back, and vice versa. All around the system. And while that commandment might be intellectually intuitive, living it out in practice, both within ourselves and external to ourselves, is so difficult. And so to that end, I'm actually going to turn this episode over to Doctor Peter, who is one of the co-founders of Souls and Hearts, our parent organization. He also hosts our sister podcast called Interior Integration for Catholics. And he's also the founder of Souls and Hearts flagship community called the Resilient Catholics Community. I myself am a member of this for going on four years now. For the next seven days, up until June 30th, the Resilient Catholics community is accepting applications to their next cohort, which will begin programing in September 2026. And it's named after Saint Mary Magdalene. So right now I'm going to turn this episode over to him, and I'm going to play a little excerpt of his explanation of what the resilient Catholics community is and how it can help you to do unto others what you would have them do to you. So without further ado, here's an excerpt from the Saint Mary Magdalene RCC cohort informational meeting.

Speaker 2: This is an adventure that the whole RCC. It's really an adventure in human formation. It's an adventure in love, in carrying out the three great loves and the two great commandments. Ultimately, everything in the RCC revolves around the two Great commandments and the three loves that are contained in the two Great Commandments. The command to love God, the command to love your neighbor, and the command to love yourself. Right. Love your neighbor as yourself. What gets me by far the least attention of all of those three loves is the third one. It's the loving of yourself in an ordered way. The first year, the foundation year in the RCC is really about you coming to know yourself, to understand yourself, to be better able to listen to yourself in your parts, and to be able to love yourself. Because the way that we love ourselves, the way that we love our parts, is going to be the root and form. Saint Thomas Aquinas says of the way that we're going to love others. Saint Thomas Aquinas and Anthony Flood brings this out so wonderfully in his book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Love. He's a Thomistic scholar out of North Dakota State University. He says that the way that we love ourselves is the template. Of how we're going to love others. And he says, and he's quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas here.

Speaker 2: You cannot love your neighbor more than you love yourself. And one of the things that we're seeing over and over and over again is that so many people's spiritual problems in quotes are really downstream consequences of human formation deficits. In other words, of the different dimensions of formation. And there are four dimensions of human formation. There's human formation. Intellectual formation. Spiritual formation, and pastoral formation. This is Saint John Paul, the second pastor of obese 1992. He says that the basis of all formation is human formation. But of those four dimensions of formation, the one that gets the least amount of attention, the one that's least appreciated, least understood, least addressed is human formation. So in the RCC, in the Brazilian Catholic community, we have a very strong laser like focus on human formation. We are learning our human formation arithmetic so that we can do our spiritual formation algebra. So many times I saw this very, very early in my career as a psychologist. People were having these spiritual struggles. But it really turns out that it's not primarily an issue of spiritual formation. It's really an issue of human formation. And so what we've done is we've looked at what are the very best resources out there to help people in their human formation. What kinds of ways can we bring together in community in a program that's oriented toward you flourishing, you thriving, right? Can't be therapy because we don't offer therapy in the RCC.

Speaker 2: We're not talking about coaching here. It's not so much about individual accompaniment. It's about how do we within our own systems, how do our innermost selves lead and guide our parts? How do we come together with this interior integration? How do we enter into this adventure together of overcoming the natural level obstacles that keep us from loving fully? That's really what it's all about. It's all about ultimately getting into coming into a deep, intimate union with the three persons of the Trinity, a deep union with Our Lady as our spiritual mother, and ultimately connecting in the mystical body of Christ in the church in love. But we do this using human formation means we're really focused on that. So this won't be a complete I mean, this isn't a standalone complete breakfast. You're going to have to have spiritual formation. You're going to have to have intellectual formation. You're going to have to have pastoral formation from other sources. Right? So this we're not meant to be a one stop shop where all your needs get met. We don't we don't advertise like that. That's not our thing. We're really focusing on that, on what our gift is, what our charism is, what our mission is of human formation.

Speaker 1: 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.