Dr. Karla J. Bellinger

Dec 11 2024

Jockeying for Position

It goes on everywhere. I have seen it at conferences. I have seen it at the beginning of the academic year: graduate students jockeying for position—smiles and handshakes, determining which professors are most important, the big name who will advance their career. I have seen it in donor relations: wealthy and powerful people are flattered and pampered by those who want their money or a favor from their position. People worth knowing are connections worth cultivating.

A friend got in the elevator with a student. He asked her ingratiatingly, “What do you teach?” She said, “I am the administrative assistant for . . . ” He turned his shoulder and did not speak to her for the rest of the ride up. She became invisible. She was not worth knowing.

This is not new. Jesus saw that same jockeying for position at the dinner of the prominent Pharisee. He was a lowly Galilean. Why had he been invited? Galileans were hillbillies from “up north,” outsiders, those whose friendship was not worth cultivating. Jesus had spent his life among those who were socially “low.” What did the Pharisee hope to gain from him?

We could spiritualize Jesus’ parable into the importance of considering oneself “low, humble, and unimportant.” But that could also lead to the crippling pride of false humility. “The one who humbles himself will be exalted” can also be used to manipulate, in seeking spiritual gain.

So how do we be true?

Jesus doesn’t tell his host to give way all he has and become financially poor. He tells him to use his position generously: serve the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, those who cannot repay you. Use your power and privilege for good.

In God’s eyes, all people are worth knowing—and not just for what you can get.

Consider/Discuss

We are perhaps all guilty of using others in some way. Parents may use their children to bolster their own prestige; employers may use their employees to make themselves look good; club leaders may use their power to sway members to their position; students may use teachers as sources of good grades, etc. It is everywhere. Think about where you have power or privilege or influence. How do you use it? How could you use that which God has given you to further the common good?

The reading from Sirach encourages the virtue of humility. The word humility comes from the same root as humus, the decayed surface layer of the soil. The junk of life—the sufferings, the struggles and the difficulties— works within us so that we see ourselves aright. We are needy and empty before God. All the good that we have is a gift. What did you once take for granted as your due, which you don’t take for granted anymore? How has suffering taught you to be more humble and compassionate?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, have mercy on us! We want to be good and humble and true. Yet it is so hard. It seems to run against our human nature. We are competitive. We jockey for position. We strive to be important. You know us. You know our hearts. You know our desires. We are such a mixture of motives. Even when we work to be good, there may be a shade of showmanship in that. Lord, help us! This day, just for today, help us to be truly good to others and true to you. Only you are good and holy and pure. Send us your Spirit so that we may imitate you more closely.

Dec 11 2024

Do I Know You?

The tone in the room was light. They were laughing. I had asked them to think about a series of questions about what they valued. It was the first day of our unit on end-of-life issues in morality class. I needed to know my starting point with these sixteen-year-old girls. How did they see the world? What mattered to them? The particular question that we were working on was, “If you had thirty days to live, how would you spend them?” One said that she’d to go climbing in the Alps. One laughed that she’d throw a big party for all of her friends. Another said that she’d eat doughnuts and cake and ice cream, everything she ever wanted and not worry about getting fat. A giggle ran around the room. This was pretend. It was fun.

When I was a chaplain in the hospital, I worked with people who lived and breathed that question. Maybe they had more than thirty days left. Maybe not. As they prepared for death, their values became clearer: Make things right with my family. Forgive. Get my affairs in order. Record a message of love to my grandchildren. It was not pretend. It was serious.

In this part of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. Does he know for sure that he is headed toward death? Maybe, maybe not. But he grows serious about forming his disciples. You can hear it in his tone when he is asked, “Who will be saved?” His response is urgent: enter through the narrow gate; no shallow discipleship; any old slapdash way of following me isn’t going to work. Be true. Focus. There will be charlatans among you. Some of you follow for egotistic reasons. Some of you are pretending. Go deeper. This is serious. Come, follow me.

Consider/Discuss

Life has its seasons. In the moment of life that you are currently in, take stock of your situation. How much do you value following Jesus? Are you pretending? Are you serious? Maybe a mixture of both? At the end of life, the possibility exists that Jesus might say to you and me, “I do not know you.” While we have the time still available to us, how can we purify our hearts and our interactions and our prayer so that Jesus is thoroughly familiar with us?
We are those who eat and drink in Jesus’ company: at Mass, we eat his Body, we drink his Blood. Yet even then, whole moments of liturgy can pass us by without our paying attention. Jesus is present. We don’t always notice. In what ways could we focus so that we worship more conscientiously? As this new school year begins, make one resolution to strengthen your liturgical practice in this upcoming season.

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you call all the nations to you, from far and from near, those who know you and those who don’t. Why should we come to you? You are our good. You are the One who has created us and has cared for us. In your love, you work to steer us straight. Your corrections can hurt. We do not see where our knees are weak and our hands droop. Show us our faults. You want us to bear the fruit of righteousness. When we come to the end of life, we want to hear you say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We do not want to hear, “I do not know you.” This is serious stuff. Lord, have mercy on us and teach us your ways.

Dec 11 2024

Closeness in Love

God is love. If we forget that, Christianity is emptied of meaning. It was love that brought the Word-made-flesh into the womb of the Virgin Mary in the Incarnation. It was love that revealed to John the Baptist that the Redeemer had come in today’s story of the Visitation. Today, it is love that cares for the body of her who took care of the body of Jesus.

God is love. That is the source of it all. There is no other. When you love someone, you want them near, close. The Greek word used for death in the New Testament is the opposite of that. It means separation. To be dead means to be cut off, isolated, and alone—apart.

In the Resurrection, God altered that isolation. God brought the human body of Jesus back to life, to be close. Stuff may still look the same on the surface, but God has transformed death in the depths of the earth.

I went to the garden to wrestle with that thought. As “the depths of the earth” simmered in my mind, I picked cherry tomatoes from plants that were ten feet high. Why so big? Last fall, I layered maple leaves and horse manure and then planted a cover crop; in spring, I turned that decaying richness under. Now, here in August, on the surface, you cannot tell. But that unseen transformation in the depths of the earth has brought forth vibrant new life.

Vibrant new life will be ours as well. All that decays? That will be transformed. We will be brought close, not be separated or isolated or lost. That is our hope: God brought Mary home, and will do the same for us. Body and soul, we will join with Jesus in heaven.

For God is love. That is the goal of it all. There is no other.

Consider/Discuss

In the Creed, we say,” I believe in the resurrection of the body.” For two millennia, theologians have wrestled with what a resurrected body looks like. We can try, but we really cannot imagine it, for it is beyond our limited time-and-space-experience. (Analogies don’t always work perfectly either.) But today’s feast of Mary’s assumption encourages us to believe that those whom God loves will ultimately be drawn close; we will become most fully ourselves, a unity of body and soul in heaven. That’s a hard thought. Spend some time thinking about it. (Maybe have a few cherry tomatoes while you’re pondering it.) What does that mean to you and the direction and goal of your life?

Like the soil in a garden, the richness of a prayer life is hidden from view. On the surface it may look the same whether we pray or not, but the fruit is different. When we are washed by God’s love, that experience transforms the junk of our life. When we have been cared about and brought close, that affects how we care for others. Have you had seasons when your prayer life was rich? What does that do for how you interact with others?

Living and Praying with the Word

Great God of the Universe, it all begins and ends with you. Your love surrounds us like a comforter on a cold night. You want us to be close to you. You do not want us to be separated. Thank you for sending your Son to transform death. That is not something that we can fully grasp. But we believe. We cannot imagine what eternal life with you will be like, but we look forward to it with joy. Mary our Mother, on this feast day, we celebrate your assumption into heaven. You are with your Son. Show us the way home. Keep us close.

Dec 11 2024

Family Divisions

To be honest, at first glance, I don’t really like today’s Gospel reading. I like family unity.

At a meeting I once attended, the opening ice-breaker was “Describe your perfect vacation.” People talked about seeing the Louvre in Paris, climbing the Rocky Mountains, marching with the jazz bands in New Orleans . . . When the going-around-the-circle answer-the-question got to me, I drew a blank on location. I said, “I don’t really care where I am. I’d like to be on a beach somewhere with my husband and all five of my kids and their spouses and grandkids and they are all getting along.” Maybe it was my facial expression. Maybe it was my dramatic pause. Everyone laughed.

I was serious.

I do like today’s reading from Hebrews: “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” and “persevere in running the race.” Isn’t it great? That fervor fires my soul!

Guess what? That fervor is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel, too. In the first century, family mattered even more than it does now. To be disowned by your family meant a loss of honor and livelihood, even starvation and death. Jesus is being about as extreme as he can. He is telling us to fix our eyes on him foremost. Kinship in Jesus’ family takes priority, even over one’s family of birth or marriage: Persevere; run the race with courage; rid ourselves of anything that pulls us away from the Lord of lords and the King of kings.

Jesus is serious about commitment. He models the way. In the Gospel of Luke, he is about to turn toward Jerusalem, that place of passion and death, a baptism of anguish into which he is about to be plunged.

He probably didn’t like it much either. But he did it anyway.

Consider/Discuss

Jesus talks about setting “the earth on fire.” When his followers were filled with the Holy Spirit, their fiery passion became one of the hallmarks of the early church. Their fervor attracted others. Like the prophet Jeremiah in the first reading, they gave all they had, even to the point of losing everything. They were willing to die for Jesus. When have you experienced that fire of faith in yourself or others?
The Letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus “the leader and perfecter of faith” who endured the cross so that we would “not grow weary and lose heart.” On this day, what can you and I do to offer to God that same commitment that Jesus gave on our behalf?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord Jesus, you do not call us to a wimpy discipleship. You ask us to give our all. On this day in the middle of August, in the heat of summer, we might be tempted to avoid anything that feels like fire. But your fire purifies us. Your fire ignites us. Your fire inspires us. Burn like a flame within us so that we pass your passionate love and joy to others. You gave your all. Help us to do the same.

Dec 11 2024

Unsung Saints

Stories of unsung heroes inspire us. An excavator-turned archaeologist just keeps digging while somebody else gets the glory for his finds. A forty-eight-year-old singer from a village in rural England is unknown until someone hands her a microphone. A mathematical genius at NASA is unseen because she is of the wrong gender and skin color.

Some of you who are reading this may have been applauded for your deeds of heroic virtue. I suspect most of you have not. The realization of what you hope for may come about in your lifetime. Or it may not.

In my garden, there are low-maintenance plants and high maintenance plants. Last summer, I grew acorn squash. I had three plants and weeded them from time to time and then let them be. They produced forty-seven acorn squash. I also had eighteen poles of green beans with four plants per pole. I had to go out every day and pick or I would be overrun with overripe leathery beans.

In God’s garden, does the Gardener prefer acorn squash to pole beans? In today’s parables, it seems that Jesus is extolling low maintenance servants and managers—those who just get on and do their job. They are self-directed, hard-working, and faithful even when no one is watching them. Like the acorn squash, they bear abundant fruit.

Where does that heroic virtue come from?

The Holy Spirit gives the courage of hidden faithfulness. A man gets out of bed for a job he hates in order to support a family he loves. A woman is continually good to another though she never receives any thanks. One forgives even though there is no reward for it. That is simple heroic virtue in ordinary life.

To be an unsung saint is challenging. The Lord says, be one anyway.

Consider/Discuss

Applause is motivating. When someone cheers you on, it can give you a shot of adrenaline. And yet applause can also lead you astray, so that you do things for the sake of a “thumbs up.” How is it more difficult to do the right thing when no one is looking? How can we avoid becoming resentful when others are recognized? How can we continue to bear good fruit no matter what is going on around us?
We don’t often think about who the Holy Spirit is in ordinary life. Yet to discover God hidden in all things awakens a secret passion that makes living vibrant and vigorous. This week, look for the steadfastness of God. Recognize the everyday faithfulness you see in yourself and others. Then write down how you have seen God at work in quiet and unseen ways. Maybe even send a note of thanks to someone who does good without being seen?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you have given us much. Yet we don’t always see that. Open our eyes to see what you have provided. Help us be faithful with that. You expect much from us who have been given much. Help us not to be afraid, but bold in doing good, whether seen or unseen. Most of all, you have given us your Spirit, our source of strength. You have not walked away to leave us on our own, watching from a distance to see what we do. You are not that sort of Divine Master. You are here with us at all times, helping us to be faithful. Thank you, thank you, thank you for that!