Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 24 March – Mon 31 March 2026
A Seminar entitled Fighting with God will be held in the Ignatius Rice Healing and Heritage Centre in Callan on Sat 11th April. This is a not to be missed event facilitated by Michael Flood an opera singer, a victim of child abuse and once a member of the Special Forces. It will be a truly inspirational day from 10am-4pm. It is highly recommended and early booking is advised to Jim Maher on 086-1276649. Cost is €50 and includes full lunch and refreshments.
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Tues 24th March – God is Law
The last set of postings centred on the supreme New Testament revelation that God is Love. This week the focus appears entirely different, that God is Law. Reading the Old Testament the impression that one gets is certainly that God is Law. In the New Testament this changes to, God is Love, and Jesus did say that he was not prepared to change one iota of the Law and it would be to the detriment of anyone to try and do so. It would seem that the brand of Catholicism that we grew up with was far more OT with its focus on obedience to rules, regulations and external observances. It is only in more recent times that the truth of a loving God rather than a punishing and vengeful being has found its way into consciousness. For many non-practicing Catholics this old notion of God is largely what they still believe in.
Wed 25th March – The Rule of Law
With a long religious history behind us of adherence to rules and regulations, and the erroneous belief that keeping the law was the path to salvation, there is something in us that tends to reject the very notion that God is Law. Once we were terrified of breaking the ‘Law’ as we perceived it out of fear of punishment. Now the prevailing attitude is that I can almost do what I like; that God is so all loving that He/She will overlook my behaviour and still forgive me. This is completely erroneous thinking that leads to a gradual erosion of all restraints and creates the worst form of enslavement. If I am free to do whatever I like, with whoever I like and as often as I like, as opposed to doing what I ought, it can only give rise to an ego-centric prison where I become a prey to my own desires and passions.
Thurs 26th March – Inviolable Laws
In the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis God gives ten commands to the natural world that have never been broken. In the Book of Exodus God gives ten commandments to Moses and these have rarely been kept. There are certain inviolable moral laws that like the laws of nature such as gravity and motion that can never change. The old perception was that God punished violation of His laws, today we would say that disobedience is its own punishment. We are not punished because of our sins but by them. We don’t break the commandments, but we do break ourselves by not observing them. Here we see that while God may be all loving and all merciful, He is also a just God who had made a moral universe with certain rules that must be obeyed.
Fri 27th March – Crisis of Obedience
Today we have a crisis of obedience. Young people feel cut adrift in a universe without parameters. The word disciple and the word discipline go hand in hand. We lack the discipline that is part of discipleship. Parents who have never been disciplined lack the ability to give proper discipline to their children. Observe in any supermarket, a child wants something and the mother says ‘no’. The child will then adopt a well-worn strategy of getting attention, like continuous whining or non-cooperation, knowing full well that the mother’s resistance is weak and it’s only a matter of time and patience before she gives in. Such children grow up without the firmness and moral strength that a definite ‘no’ can bring. When it comes to being offered drugs or alcohol the only strength that young adult will have to say ‘no’ will be the definitive ‘no’ the mother exercised in the formative years.
Sat 28th March – Discipline with Love
The importance of discipline has become much more clear to me since acquiring my new dog. Thankfully Corky is now well-trained and responds well to discipline. It is because she is so well disciplined that I can bring her almost anywhere knowing that she will conduct herself well, win admiration for her behaviour, and so be free to offer that unique something to each encounter that only such an animal can bring. Without discipline she would be spending a lot more time in the doghouse! One lady said that seeing the love between me and that animal on the altar always brought tears to her eyes and gave her an experience of God’s love. I once asked Corky’s former owner about her method of discipline. What she said was profound: ‘If you force an animal (or person) to do what you want you break their spirit and can only end up with a coward. If you discipline with love and firmness that animal will fully respect you and always give of their best.’
Sun 29th March – Palm Sunday
The image of Psalm Sunday that is strongest in most minds is that of Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem with the crowds waving branches and crying Hosanna. For some reason my own focus has often been on the donkey and the part that he played. The ass is regarded as the humblest of creatures and yet it was on this most humble animal that Jesus chose to enter his own city.
All of us are called to be Christ bearers. It is the vocation of every Christian to be the face of God and to show the love of God in our world. When you think about it, are we not all asses in the wrong sense when we let the approval of others become the yardstick of how we feel about ourselves? It’s so easy to go through life always looking over our shoulders wondering what other people are thinking of us. It comes out is phrases we use like ‘I couldn’t do that, so and so wouldn’t like me for it,’ or ‘What would the neighbours think?’ Then so often the fear of failure is the very thing that keeps us from attempting something in the first place.
Christ certainly didn’t come on this earth with the purpose of satisfying everyone’s expectations. Just days before his fateful trip to Jerusalem he had spoken about his forthcoming passion to his disciples and Peter’s response was ‘Heaven preserve you Lord, this must not happen to you’, to which he replied ‘Get behind me Satan, the way you think is not God’s.’
What was it that motivated Jesus to go the way of the cross and to lay down his life? It could only be love and following through on the will of his father. I read a great little story recently on another form of motivation, namely fear. A man who usually worked on the four to midnight shift at a factory used to walk home from his job. He discovered that he could take ten minutes off his journey by taking a shortcut through a cemetery. This became his custom until one night he stumbled into a grave that had been opened right in the middle of his path. It was deep and try as he might he couldn’t climb out. Instead he settled in the corner to wait until morning for someone to pull him out. A short time later a drunk also fell into the same grave and his frantic attempts to scramble out woke the other who reached over and touched his foot. ‘Sorry friend’ he said, ‘but you won’t get out of here,’ but he did. That, said the author, is motivation based on fear.
Depicted above is a replica of an acorn made from wood. Just one little acorn has the potential not just of a mighty oak tree but also of a forest of oak trees. If I open it you will see inside a little shiny heart made of stone, it looks nice but it is still made of stone.
Our potential for love is often locked up in a heart of stone and it is the greatest responsibility of our lives to unlock it. There are just so many ways that our hearts can become hardened.
When we experience the betrayal of someone close to us it’s so easy to close down. ‘Once bitten twice shy’, becomes our motto which is really another way of saying that I will never love or allow myself to get close to anyone again. Yet it was on the very night that he was betrayed that Jesus held the Last Supper with his disciples and offered the bread to Judas his betrayer.
When we are a victim of injustice, perhaps are being blamed in the wrong and forced to carry someone else’s sins it’s not easy to be bigger than whatever has happened and many carry bitterness to their graves and even beyond. Yet the example set by Jesus ever stands before us. After being reviled and spat upon, treated with contempt and crucified for something he hadn’t done his final prayer was still ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Had he refused to forgive he would never have risen on Easter no more than we can ever rise when our hearts become encased in resentment.
We naturally associate Easter with that Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead but if we look at his life we will see signs of his Easter spirit all over the place.
He refused to bend before public opinion; the approval of others meant nothing to him. Doing the will of his father was all that mattered.
Whatever was done to him he always chose to rise above it and be bigger than it. That’s also the big challenge for us.
Even in the Garden of Gethsemane when his soul was so anguished that he sweated blood he was able to see the hand of God in all that was taking place. The cup of suffering that he was faced with was something freely chosen from the hand of his father. Likewise it is in the acceptance of all that happens to be in our lives right now that we too open our hearts and begin to rise with him. Easter may be celebrated on a particular date each year but it begins as an experience for us when we are able to say yes to what is God’s will for us.
Mon 30th March – Love is the Fulfilment of the Law
How do we balance the paradox of a God who is Love and a God who is also Law? Jesus said that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfil it. He showed that Love is the fulfilment of the Law and so he didn’t always do the right thing, he did the loving thing. What he did bring was a change of emphasis from doing the minimum out of a sense of duty to doing the maximum as a response to being loved. His focus was placed firmly on love and practicing justice. He overlooked many of the man-made rules and summarized the six hundred or more laws of his Jewish religion into one concise framework: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul and mind and you must love your neighbour as yourself.’ Upon these he said hung the entire law and the prophets. A man committed a traffic offence for which he had to appear in court. In the lead up days a friend remarked as to how cool and unconcerned he was and enquired why. ‘Should I be worried’ he replied, ‘when I know the judge as my best friend’!