Dear Souls & Hearts Member,
Identity. Who am I? Who is God? Who is my neighbor? I am seeing more and more clearly how identity issues are the third leg of the stool (along with attachment needs and integrity needs) required for security and stability in the natural realm. Therefore, we are taking the time needed to address identity.
If you want to deeply understand instability or insecurity in the natural realm within you, chances are it comes down to unmet attachment needs, unmet integrity needs, or distortions in identity.
The importance of being heirs of God
In my last reflection Self-Images and Identity, we began to answer the question of “Who am I?” by exploring how each Christian is a beloved little son or daughter of God. This is our first and primary identity as baptized Christians.
In this reflection, we explore the implications of our adoption by God through baptism as His beloved children – how by embracing this identity, we also become God’s heirs. The importance of this is underline by the fact that “inheritance” is mentioned 237 times in the Bible. As a sample, here are 100 Bible Verses about Heirs To The Kingdom.
One of the most compelling scripture passages on being heirs of God is Romans 8:15-17:
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Here we see clearly the connection between our adoption, moving us from being slaves or servants of God to being His children. And if we are children, then we are necessarily his heirs. This truth is so important that the Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims it clearly in the very first numbered paragraph: “In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life” (CCC 1).
What does being an heir of God mean? Surprisingly little attention has been paid to our identity as heirs of God.
Michael Peppard, in his Catholic Biblical Quarterly article titled Adopted and Begotten Sons of God: Paul and John on Divine Sonship wrote that:
“As research into Roman social practices has demonstrated, adoption in the Roman world was enacted for far different reasons than it is in the modern Western world; the chief impetus was the securing of an heir. Inheritance included not only land and other wealth but also the family name, the family glory, and a share of the family spirit. These are high stakes, and Paul no doubt knew that there were often disputes between biological and adopted sons, or between adopted sons and biological nephews or grandsons. His argument thus relies on a crucial feature of the social context—the certainty of an adopted son’s right to inherit from his adoptive father. Roman laws and cultural mores clearly held that the inheritance claims of adopted sons were valid.” [p. 96]
Being adopted conferred the rights to all that the family possessed – not just physical goods, but the intangible goods as well.
One of the best sources to flesh out the implications is Fr. Matthias Scheeben, a 19th century German priest. Catholic theologian Bruce D. Marshall in his 2012 First Things article titled Renewing Dogmatic Theology wrote that “The generations that followed Scheeben regarded him as one of the greatest minds of modern Catholic theology.” In his article, Marshall boldly proclaims that Fr. Scheeben can revive dogmatic theological better than any other modern theologian. High praise indeed, but in the little I have read of Scheeben, I have come away not only impressed by his clarity and vigor, but astounded at the implications he lays out for our identity.
So what does Fr. Scheeben tell us about being heirs? In his mind-opening book Nature and Grace, he tells us that:
Adoption by God differs greatly from adoption among men. When we are adopted by God we are not only called but actually are His children. We are not only morally elevated but in a certain sense are reborn and receive a kind of new nature and new life. We acquire not only an external right to an inheritance but are interiorly equipped and empowered to receive it, since the inheritance does not consist in external goods but is a most exalted life of knowledge and love of God. [p. 107].
We have so much to unpack in these three sentences. The first is our identity as heirs of God.
Our identity as God’s heirs
Fr. Scheeben explains the radical transformation that happens when we are adopted by God:
Although divine adoption is the effect of God’s love, it is more like generation and birth than the simple moral relationship implied by human adoption. The reason is easily perceived. Divine adoption communicates to us a new, incomparably higher life, a life for which no seed is produced by us but has to be planted in us. [p. 109].
First, God transforms us. Utterly. Completely. St. Paul described this radical transformation of embracing his divine adoption in Galatians 2:20: “…it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
This transformation is the major theme in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s classic Transformation in Christ where he writes: “The great mystery of our metaphysical situation, that God is nearer to us than we are ourselves, is manifest in the fact that we cannot even be wholly ourselves—in the sense of individuality as a unique divine thought—until we are reborn in Christ.”
What is our inheritance?
The answer to this question is alluded to in the verse above – Christ gives Himself to us. Let’s go deeper.
Fr. Scheeben states that our inheritance “does not consist in external goods but is a most exalted life of knowledge and love of God.” [p. 107].
In our modern world, we tend to think of inheritance in terms of property and good distributed to heirs when someone dies, usually through a last will and testament, or failing that, through probate court – money, real estate, trusts, jewelry, vehicles, etc.
That’s not our inheritance as the sons and daughters of God.
In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), we have perhaps the clearest description of inheritance. The prodigal son initially squanders his inheritance. The elder son was thinking of his inheritance in terms of a goat he could eat with his friends.
Fr. Scheeben explains the contrast between natural and divine inheritance: “The Father’s wealth does not, as with us men, consist so much in the possession of external goods as in the infinitely rich and happy life He has in Himself. Among us men, a father’s natural life is not enough to procure his happiness; he needs external goods to sustain his life and to make it happy. Accordingly, he does not impart to his son, along with life, all that is needed for the latter’s wellbeing and happiness but has to leave him external goods for this purpose.” [p. 119]
God is different, though. In contrast to our natural parents, God can provide us everything we need, everything. In contrast to natural goods, God bequeaths us divine goods, His own personal goods:
“As God’s children, we receive a most exalted dignity that is based not on a mere appellation but on our inner state, which is so noble that it has evoked expressions of rapturous wonderment from the Apostles and Fathers. We also receive the greatest of all rights, a title to a divine inheritance, to the personal goods of God, to goods such as belonging to God alone. And this claim does not rest on a simple promise; it is founded on the intrinsic dignity of our participation in the divine nature which we have received.” [p. 146]
In the drawing above, God the Father gives Mike (our 52-year-old married father of four we’ve discussed in the last two reflections, whose mock PartsFinder Pro report you can download as a PDF here) a scepter, the Holy Spirit crowning him, and Jesus is offering the light of divine life – all of these are divine goods.
In the parable of the prodigal son, the merciful father tries to reframe the inheritance for his elder son, trying to help him understand what it really means for him to be his heir – the father tells the elder son in Luke 15:31 “…you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
“You are always with me” seems to be a foretaste of eternal union with God in beatific vision; “everything I have is yours” is the sum total of all the divine goods God possesses and these are mind-blowing, as St. Paul reveals in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has the human heart imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”
The limitations to receiving these goods are the ones we create ourselves, through our lack of vision, our hardheartedness, and our lack of integration (more on that below).
As he so often does, St. Maximus the Confessors makes it clearer for us. In his Ambigua, St. Maximus teaches that our inheritance is nothing less that God Himself: “The whole of the human being is interpenetrated by the whole of God and becomes all that God is, excluding identity of essence. The human being receives to itself the whole of God and, as a prize for ascending to God, inherits God himself.” [41].
In short, our inheritance is God Himself.
Think on that. In our inheritance we come to share, to partake in God’s nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). It’s not about money, or grandpa’s old golf clubs, or Aunt Jane’s nearly complete set of Beanie Babies (she had every single one except Chef Robuchon the Bear!).
Rather, we inherit God. This is what it is all about. Back to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life” (CCC 1). Heirs of His blessed life, the life of God Himself.
Going back to nearly the beginning of our Church, the early Church Father St. Irenaeus wrote “God became man that man might become god.” (Against Heresies, V, Preface). Dr. Gerry explored the reality of deification in greater detail in his Kingdom Within reflection titled Saint Catherine of Siena and “Becoming God.”
In summary, God wants us to join Him in Him and to share His divine nature for our inheritance.
Integration is essential
In my reflection from October 12, 2022 titled Why Is Interior Integration Crucial for Union with God?, I presented the position of St. Thomas Aquinas, that if we do not have interior integration, if we do not have this inner unity, we compromise our capacity for union with God. The basic Thomistic argument is that inner unity – union within oneself – is required for union with God.
So this divine adoption, this identity of being a beloved little son or daughter of God, and the implications for being an heir of God need to be embraced across all of our parts. That’s why, in the drawing above, we see Mike’s parts sharing in the experience of being both a beloved little son of God and His heir.
God respects the way we organize (intentionally or not) our internal world; he respects our internal hierarchy. In general, I don’t believe He wishes to form a separate relationship with each part of us – rather, I think He wants to work with and through our innermost selves to bring our entire beings into relationship, into union with him, to share in the fullness of His divine being.
And that integration, focus in on the natural level, is what Souls and Hearts is all about, it’s what the Resilient Catholics Community is all about. We are all about removing the natural-level, human-formation impediments to your embracing your true identity as a beloved little son or daughter of God, and as an heir who shares deeply in God’s divine life.
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Great Interior Integration for Catholics podcast episodes for listening during Holy Week
IIC 109 Jesus’ Psychological Agony in the Garden
IIC 110 Being with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: Experiential Exercise
IIC 46 Shame and Tragedy: Judas Iscariot and You
IIC 47 Shame and Redemption: St. Peter and You
IIC 48 Shame and Repentance: St. Dismas
Join us for the live IIC podcast episode on April 24, 2025, Easter Tuesday
We have space for 100 for our live recording of Interior Integration for Catholics podcast episode 165, which will have an experiential exercise and lots of Q&A and discussion. Join Catholic IFS therapists Marion Moreland, David Edwards, and me on Zoom on the evening of Thursday, April 24, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time. Registration is free, but required here. We will be answering questions, and going deeper into the content from IIC episodes 157 to 164.
Join me in person in Steubenville Ohio on May 5, 2025 for the “Leading with Love” workshop
The full title is Leading with Love: Inner Work for Catholic Leaders and you can find out so much more here. We already have several signed up, and we have room for about 12 more for this smaller venue. Here are some critical points:
- St. Thomas Aquinas provides a metaphysical foundation for the connections between self-love and self-governance, providing the conceptual base (as Catholic philosopher Anthony Flood covers in detail in his excellent book The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas. In short, for this presentation, Aquinas provides the “gold of the old.”
- Internal Family Systems provides a practical model for living out inner self-love and self-governance. IFS is the “silver of the new” — offering us actionable steps to increase our internal self-governance and then, by extension, increasing our capacity to lead and guide other effectively in love.
- This workshop is highly experiential – it offers Catholic leaders an opportunity to go inside and connect with the parts of themselves whom they have difficulty loving and leading effectively.
- The workshop runs from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM on Monday, May 5, 2025 at the Eat N’ Park in at 100 Mall Drive in Steubenville, OH. Lunch and dessert can be purchased directly from the restaurant.
More details, including the complete schedule are in this PDF Flyer. Register and pay the $40 non-refundable fee here; remember, space is limited to the first 22 registrants. Dr. Peter hopes to see many of you there. If you have questions, reach out to Dr. Peter at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594.
The Resilient Catholics Community awaits you on the interest list
If you are seeking a structure, step-by-step program, grounded firmly on a Catholic understanding of the human person and informed by Internal Family Systems and other parts work approaches, consider the Resilient Catholics Community. Get on the interest list for our June 2025 St. Jerome cohort here.
Come and flourish with us, seeking the three great loves within the two Great Commandments – loving God, your neighbor and yourself – with all your being, including all your parts. So that you can love wholeheartedly.
And, as a special bonus for just RCC members, I’ve started a new, daily podcast called “Walking Together as One” which is only two or three minutes long, and consists of my reflections on that same day, thought, ideas, experiences, all about Catholicism and parts work, including my experience of my own parts. Current RCC members who are logged into our Mighty Network, you can check that out here.
Conversation Hours
Call me on my cell (317.567.9594) any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM to discuss anything in these semimonthly reflections or in the IIC podcast, or to discuss our communities, the RCC and the Formation for Formators Community.
Pray for us
I am praying for you all in this Holy Week, as our Lord makes His sacrifice to redeem us, and to open the way for us to become beloved sons and daughters of God, as well as His heirs. Please pray for us at Souls and Hearts. We need so much prayer to support and fuel our work in our little corner of the Lord’s vineyard, Catholic human formation.
Warm regards in Christ and His Mother in this holiest of weeks,
Dr. Peter