Jim Cogley Reflections – Tues 11 Mar – Mon 17 Mar 2025

Two Wood You Believe seminars involving Personal and Ancestral Healing are scheduled to be held in the Edmund Rice Healing Centre in Callan Co Kilkenny on Saturdays March 15^th and 22^nd from 10am to 4pm. The cost will be €50 with refreshments and lunch included. Bookings by phone or text to Jim Maher on 086-1276649. This is a beautiful venue that is quickly becoming established as a centre of Healing. As these are almost full you may be placed on a waiting list to avail of any cancellations.

Tue 11^th March – The Future of Church

This is a frequently asked question today, where is Church going or does the Church in Ireland even have a future? I don’t feel qualified to answer that question and I am not sure if anyone else is either. The wind of the Spirit is unpredictable, it blows where it wills and may well surprise us all. As Pilgrimage Director in Our Lady’s Island, I combine very comfortably my work of promotion with giving retreats and seminars which I have been doing for most of my years. This affords the privilege of working in around half the counties of Ireland North and South on an annual basis. From my travels and meetings with so many I can offer a particular vantage point from where to address the above questions. At the same time, I am aware that what I offer is far from being the complete picture and will inevitable be coloured by my own interpretation.

Wed 12^th March – A System in Decline

After decades of denial, we are now finally facing the reality that the Church as we have known it is in terminal decline. Priestless parishes are common and even if there is an incremental increase in the number of seminarians in training it will have little impact against the death rate from the vast numbers of those in their twilight years. There is still an assumption, that should well be questioned, that modern seminary training is suitable to prepare men for ministry in today’s world. Also questionable is the more recent practice of priests rotating duties in different parishes at weekends that must surely lead to even more clerical isolation, functionality and lack of belonging. Given a vast decline in the number of priests it seems likely that only main centres of population will have regular Masses while rural parishes may have occasional services. The exception may be where the last priest in situ had the foresight to prepare people for ministry and the wisdom  to step back far enough to allow people to prepare liturgies and take their rightful place. After his time this practice will likely continue and probably thrive.

Thurs 13^th March – Devolved Governance

Where there is no attempt to devolve power from a clerical to a lay base a church will be in trouble from the day when the bishop has no priest to fill that vacancy. If lay people are not already liturgically involved, no one will be able to step up to the mark after centuries of being suppressed under the dead hand of clericalism. The urgency to prepare people for lay ministry should be abundantly clear at this crucial stage but does need serious thought. For example, those of a spiritual orientation, with potential for leadership, need to be identified and encouraged to come forward. Many would be functionaries, with little spiritual awareness, may like to be considered, but to what purpose? As part of training an evaluation system would be necessary for all involved. Without feedback many might push their own agenda, or a particular form of devotionalism, while real needs would be overlooked. Some might even suffer from the illusion that they are doing great while in reality people are not happy.

Fri 14^th March – Disembodied Worship

The word Church in Greek is Ecclesia which means Gathering. It is an unfortunate fact that so very few churches in Ireland were built with community in mind. Instead, they were designed to promote a form of disembodied worship where people never met eyeball to eyeball, sat facing almost away from each other, were not encouraged to speak and where it was possible to arrive anonymous, participate in whatever was going on, and still leave unnoticed having had no human interaction. Unlike the UK, where a centre for socializing was adjacent to most churches, in Ireland the only gathering place was the Church gates. Very few churches promoted any obvious connection between Communion, Community, Connection and Communication, with the last three all being an essential extension of the Eucharistic Celebration.

Sat 15^th March – A Likely Scenario

So where are we heading during this time of crisis? I doubt if the big churches will quickly become obsolete, but many will struggle financially and major repair work left undone will herald the demise of many. Funerals will still take place, but much more with trained celebrants who already are doing a wonderful job. Church weddings are almost, and will become more, a thing of the past, with most taking place in secular venues. Not as many parents present children for baptism anymore and if a secular welcoming and naming ceremony were introduced many would opt for that. What could be classed as cultural practice will completely diminish but what will surely continue is the coming together of people who have experienced some level of spiritual awakening and for whom faith is a lived reality. In the words of the late great theologian Karl Rahner, ‘the Christians of the 21^st Century will either be mystics or they will not be Christians at all.’

Sun 16^th March – Transfiguration

In the gospel today we see Jesus doing some mountain climbing. He takes his three closest companions Peter, James and John away from the crowd and up a mountain where they can be alone by themselves. There we are told he was transfigured, his clothes became dazzlingly white and they were joined by Moses and Elijah. It was as if the veil of his humanity was pushed aside for a time and they saw him as he really was in his divine essence.

To hear this story as an historical event relating to the Jesus figure of 2000 years ago would be to do it a grave injustice. It is not just about Jesus being revealed as the Son of God but it is also about the incredible dignity and value that is ours that lies just beneath the veil of our sometimes tattered and often broken humanity.

There’s a story from Thailand going back 300 years that illustrates something of the truth to be found in that passage. The country was then known as Siam. The Siamese monks were in possession of the most amazing buddha statue. It was 10 feet tall and weighed two and a half tons. Believe it or not it was made mostly of solid gold and its value today would be hundreds of millions. The Burmese Army planned to attack Thailand and the monks were determined to protect the shrine that meant so much more to them than any monetary value. They also knew that the Burmese Army would stop at nothing to steal the statue because it was worth so much money.

So they got to work covering the statue with layers of clay several inches thick along with pieces of coloured glass hoping that the warriors would ignore it and think it worthless. Sadly, the monks were slaughtered in the invasion but, as hoped, the Golden Buddah was overlooked by the soldiers and so remained hidden for two centuries. It was safe because it was hidden in plain sight in the monastery where so many came and went each day.

Back in the 1950s renovation works were taking place in order to make room for a new building. The monks arranged for a crane to come and remove the ‘clay’ Buddha to a new location. When the crane started to shift the statue it was found to be much heavier than expected and began to crack. Wanting to protect the priceless shrine the monks lowered it back down and decided to wait until the next day in order to bring in more powerful equiptment.

Then to add insult to injury it began to rain heavily on the statue that was now out in the open so they covered it down with tarpoleum. In the middle of the night the head monk took his flashlight and went out to make sure the Buddah was adequately covered.

When the light of the flashlight shone into the cracks of the clay he saw a glimmer…..a reflection of something underneath the shroud of clay. He got some tools and carefully began to chisel away shards of clay to find that the glimmer grew brighter. Many hours later with lots more clay removed he was in the presence of a Buddha made of solid gold. Beneath the clay they also found a key that unlocked the statue into five pieces making it easier to move.

It’s a true story, someone here may even have seen it, because it now resides in the Temple of the Golden Buddah in Bangkok in Thailand. It’s a major attraction where every year millions of people go to see this magnificient work of art and to worship at his feet. And to think it remained hidden for so long and may never have been uncovered.

You and I are not unlike that statue. Life does a real good job of plastering us up with the clay of life, but our real value is on the inside. There is a blueprint for magnificence in all of us.

At the deepest possible level, we are more precious than gold and the Father looks down on us and says, ‘You are my beloved child and with you I am well pleased.’ We may not always think it but we had better believe it and trust His word, because the more we believe it the greater will be the quality of our lives.

Mon 17^th March. – St Patrick’s Day

Nothing dies but something new is born

While something old is dying, something new is usually in the process of being born. What I see in my own work is an unprecedented level of interest in healing with many courses being double-booked. Alongside of this is the emergence of centres with a focus on healing where the original sense of church as ‘the gathering’ is evident. Such places attract people in large numbers, engage them with their own story, link them to a bigger story, give them a sense of belonging and reawaken faith. Usually, the Bible forms the backdrop for this work with the integration of the human and spiritual journey as one. I hope, and expect to see in the future, many more such centres and more wholistic teachers/presenters being formed in such places. Their coming on stream will help to meet the needs of this ever-increasing flock the vast majority of whom would say that their hunger was not being met through traditional religious practice. These are the new Patricks who are now being called as fishers of people who will help bring to the shoreline of consciousness what is really a miraculous draft of fish.