Dr. Karla J. Bellinger

Jan 24 2025

The Tender Voice of Jesus

Around the corner from my office at Notre Dame is a statue by sculptor Ivan Mestrovic of the encounter between Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well. The Lord is looking straight at the woman. The woman is clinging to a large jar and looking down. It is midday. What did this woman expect when she woke up that day? Another dry and empty day as the pariah of the town? In Mosaic law, it is the husband who divorces the wife, so she has already been cast off five times. And her current live-in has not married her. Yet here is a bone-weary male Jewish stranger, asking her for a drink. Asking her for a drink. Apparently from her bucket. No wonder she is looking down.

This statue campus freezes time right there. But in the Gospel, we hear Jesus tenderly poke and prod and speak to her until she opens up and lifts her head. He holds out to her an abundance of the water of life, greater than she has ever imagined. And she takes it.

She drops her bucket (to which she clings so tightly in the statue) and runs to tell the news about the stranger. When she comes back, she doesn’t bring a bucket; she brings a whole village!

In art, we look at spaces, not just objects. What most impresses me about Mestrovic’s statue is the tenderness in the space between the two characters. Some of us are preachers, some are teachers. Whatever our ministry in life, when we seek to help people come to God, it is that tone of tenderness that crosses divides. More important than words, come into the space with gentleness. Living water will flow.

Consider/Discuss

Jesus also entrusts his thirst to us. We encounter him in order to be filled. Yet he has no bucket but ours. What is our role in fulfilling Jesus’ mission to the thirsty world in which we live?
Read through the Gospel again, this time imagining great tenderness in the voice of Jesus. How do you hear the passage differently?

Living and Praying with the Word

Like the woman at the well and the Israelites in the desert, Lord, sometimes we wonder if you—or anyone—cares. Yet you continue to tenderly poke and prod and speak to us. Help us to raise our eyes and see you looking at us with love. As we continue on through this Lent, bring us to repentance and to glory, but also deepen our tenderness in our mission to bring living water to those who thirst for you.

Jan 24 2025

That First Commandment? God Is Serious!

Do you remember your most embarrassing moment? The time you tripped and fell onstage during a play? How about the day you threw up in biology class?

Psychologists say that negative memory weighs heavily. Your great-aunt can say all kinds of nice things about you, but you still remember the day fifteen years ago when she said something critical. If you have/had loving and patient parents, you still probably remember the few times they absolutely blew up. If they were the enraged-all-the-time types, you probably wouldn’t remember that at all, for it was the norm.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gets mad. Really mad. Turning over the tables in the temple must not have been his norm: all four Gospels have an account of Jesus driving out the money-changers. Years later, when his actions and his words were being recorded, they remembered this moment of fury and every one of them wrote it down. Jesus wanted better: “This is my Father’s house,” he cried. “Make it right!”

Could Jesus be both sinless and angry?

If we see someone mistreating a child, we get really hot inside. We want better. If we are treated as an object—as nothing, as worthless—fire burns within us. We want better. Moral theologians tell us that emotions carry no sin in and of themselves. What we do with our emotions—that is our moral responsibility. Injustice should make us angry. Indignation must move us to action.

Jesus wanted better. My mom once said to me, “God takes the first commandment very seriously.” When the Lord gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, he said, “You shall have no other gods besides me.” And meant it.

Consider/Discuss

When have you been angry about something that was not right? What did you do about it? Did you wish later that you had done something differently? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to direct our anger so that we do and/or say the right things, even in a moment of fury?
Jesus wanted his Father’s house to be a place of prayer, not a stinking location of commerce. How do we safeguard reverence for places of worship? How do we safeguard reverence for the people who frequent those places of worship? How do the two sometimes conflict?

Living and Praying with the Word

Here in the middle of Lent, Jesus, you again plead to make things right. You want this world to be just. You yourself experienced deep emotion. You know human nature by sharing in it. So you know that feelings can throw us off. You know what passion can do— positively and negatively. Help us to sort through all of that so that we do the right thing in each circumstance.

Jan 24 2025

Transformed by the Brilliance of God

I was shoveling the driveway. It was negative two degrees. The snow was deep. The sky was blue. The late February sun was strong. Sparkles of brilliant white glistened in the snow where the sun shone upon it. It was cold. It was very bright. I felt my eyes flooded with light.

As I tossed that white stuff onto the snowbank, I thought about the Transfiguration: Jesus bathed in light with a face shining like the sun, his clothes dazzlingly white. Maybe it was the brilliance of the snow or the brightness of the sun; maybe it was the contrast with so many drab and dreary months of winter gray; I don’t know which it was, but that image of “dazzling” grabbed hold of me. Dazzling—

God is dazzling!

I wonder, what did it feel like for Peter and James and John to be so dazzled by Jesus at the Transfiguration that Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all of the synoptic Gospels—tell this story?

What does it feel like to be dazzled? Other than snow in the sunshine, what kinds of dazzling brightness do we experience? I think of the shimmer of sunshine dancing on water . . . a mountaintop glowing with the pink and gold of a sunset . . . the twinkle of dew sparkling on spider webs in the morning sun. Moments of beauty flash into my mind. Tastes of God’s radiance shine through the created world.

The light of God enfolds us with the warmth of being beloved. As Isaac was beloved, as Jesus was the Beloved, so we too are beloved. To be beloved is dazzling. Radiant brilliance seeps into us.

Consider/Discuss

How about you? Have you seen the snow sparkle, the sun shine on the water, or the gold of the sunset? If not while shoveling snow, when and where have you been dazzled by light . . . astounded . . . awed . . . ?
If we want to experience God, how do we do that? This Lent, center yourself in the Holy Spirit and take little sips of belovedness. Ponder the dazzling brightness of God. For ten seconds, let your ribcage swell with the joy of Jesus; for twenty seconds, savor a child-like wonder; for thirty seconds, glory in the created world that you see in front of you. You are wanted, cherished, cared for: that is belovedness. That is prayer. In small sips, dwell, abide, and remain in the dazzling light of God.

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, there is much that we don’t know about your transfiguration. Maybe you were always dazzling when you walked on this earth and the Transfiguration was the only time the apostles saw it. As children of light, we are surrounded by an ocean of your divine light. Wherever we are, wherever we go, the Holy Spirit seeks to reveal beauty and goodness and dazzling Presence to us. You know our blindness. Show us your reality, Lord, and let us not shy away from being dazzled by you.

Jan 24 2025

The True Guardian of the Galaxies Leads Us into and through Lent

Out in the woods, I turn a corner. I stop suddenly. On the leaves in front of me, a red-tailed hawk is perched on the body of a squirrel. His beak snatches at its red flesh. The hawk’s black eyes stare at me. He goes back to picking at his meat, predator eating prey.

In the desert, Jesus was meat. How did he not get eaten by wolves in the Judean wilderness? Bears and lions roamed the hills. Jackals howled at nighttime. For forty days, by Mark’s account, the son of the carpenter dwelt among them. He was weak. He was exposed. He was vulnerable. He could have been picked to pieces. In that stark space—stripped of human support—the Savior of the world started his earthly ministry.

Lent is the season of the desert. We have forty days to ponder our vulnerability; wolves and hawks could eat us as well. We could be picked to pieces by the lions outside of ourselves or ripped to shreds by the jackals of our own minds and hearts. How are we to make it through this life? Is our own strength enough? In reality, in our emptiness, exposed and vulnerable, we are as defenseless as squirrels.

The Holy Spirit thrust Jesus into the immenseness of the desert. The Holy Spirits thrusts us into this season of penitence to recognize our need for God, to find God and to seek God. The goal of Lent is to strip away anything that keeps us from belonging to God alone.

The Creator of the universe is trustworthy. In today’s Genesis story, the Almighty creates a covenant of care for all creatures. In the wilderness story, the angels tend to Jesus. In our own littleness, we too are protected. Our God is vast and good, and yet remembers us. Under the divine wings, we find shelter. We will not be eaten.

Consider/Discuss

This week, we enter into this Lenten season of repentance and self examination for conversion. Do we believe that God is our protector, that God will act on our behalf? As we look at the wild beasts of life, what makes us afraid? What happens when we turn to our own power to save?
In the saga from Genesis, God works through the faithfulness of Noah to rescue a broken world. As we trust that God has this whole world in his hands, how are we being called to be both faithful and heroic this Lent? What is our part in making this world a better place?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, Savior of the world, you know what the wilderness is like. You have been there. We also have days when we feel the hot sun beating down hard; we also fear the cries of wild animals in the night—they make us afraid. Strengthen our trust and help us to cling to you. Almighty God, show us that you are with us. Strip away our delusions of self-sufficiency and help us to be willing to serve you and you alone. Holy Spirit, grant us the courage of the desert this Lent.

Jan 24 2025

Transformed by the Touch of Jesus

Jesus speaks sparingly in Mark’s Gospel. He acts . . . quickly. We are not even yet out of the first chapter and he has called the disciples, rebuked demons, and healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Today, the wonder-worker of Galilee stretches out his hand to the leper and straightaway the leprosy leaves him. Little talking. Much doing.

We have many of Jesus’ words. Thus we pay close attention to what the Teacher said. But here in Mark, the process matters more than the words—the calling, the traveling, the exorcisms, the healings, the dying and the rising. This royal Messiah is a man of action. How can we understand the Christ as the early Marcan community saw him? Pay attention to the verbs.

Jesus touches the leper.

No Jew touches a leper. The diseased are unclean. The book of Leviticus makes very clear that a leper is set apart: no hug, no tap on the arm, no smoothing of the hair, and no rub of the back—no touching. The man may not have felt a human caress of any sort for years. He begs to be cleansed. And Jesus touches him.

What then? Does the man tremble from the warmth flowing from Jesus’ hand? Does a tingling fire awaken his nerves like the heat from a habanero pepper? Do his eyes water? Does his skin burst clean? What is it like to be instantly healed from leprosy?

We hear the words—words go in, words go out—we’ve heard them before; but can we imagine what it feels like to be touched by Jesus?

The saints depict the touch of God as a flaming arrow that burns the heart, an inner swelling of love. Augustine says that he was touched by God, and then burned for God’s peace.

Jesus touches the leper. How could he possibly stay silent?

Consider/Discuss

This Sunday, on which the secular calendar places Valentine’s Day, how can we be more attentive to touch: human touch, divine touches in prayer, the touch of the Holy Spirit through nature. What are the ways through which God touches you in your life?
As we head toward Lent this week, try reading the whole Gospel of Mark quickly. It’s short; it won’t take very long. Be particularly observant of the process, the flow of action revealed through the verbs. What is the overall arc, the big picture, of what Jesus is doing?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, we fall to our knees and beg you to touch us. Your tenderness transformed the leper. Your touch has transformed our lives. Open our hearts to experience your presence more deeply, your holy caress, your living flame of love. Through your grace, we leave behind words and turn toward your blessed silence. Send your touch. Send your Spirit. Send your love.