Jim Cogley: Reflections Tues 18th Feb – Mon 24th Feb 2025

Note: A seminar entitled Personal and Ancestral Healing will be held in Lady’s Island Community Centre on Saturday8^th March from 10am to 4pm. Cost €40 with refreshments included. Facilitators – Jim Cogley & Luba Rodzhuk. Bookings by phone or text to 087-7640407.

Because of huge demand and limited spaces, two similar 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 and 22^nd also 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. Early booking is advised.

Tue 18^th Feb – Healing & Discipleship

One of my very early questions of a religious nature is still current. It has to do with the place of healing in the Christian Church or more accurately why the absence of healing? When we read the Gospels, it becomes abundantly clear that healing was what Christ was about. He preached and he healed, that was his ministry. As a result of his preaching people were healed and then they either witnessed to his miracles or became his disciples. He never told people that their suffering was good for their souls, or that it was the will of God, or that they just had to grin and bear it. Instead, wherever he encountered souls in distress he brought healing and comfort. How many churches today can we associate with being centres of healing? If a church is fulfilling its mission and is in alignment with its Gospel purpose, should it not almost by definition be a centre of healing? It has to be argued that somewhere, sometime, we badly lost our way.

Wed 19^th Feb – Where we went astray?

It would seem that as a church we lost our way very early. In fact, as far back as 313AD when Christianity became the imperial and recognized religion of the Roman Empire. It was from there on that the church began to lose its focus on healing, and energies began to go into maintaining social and ecclesiastical order. This was the beginning of ‘Churchianity’ with emphasis being placed on keeping rules and regulations, practicing one’s religion rather than being on a spiritual path where healing was seen as essential on the path to salvation. From there on ecclesiastical bureaucracy began to take over and the liberating message of the Gospels got sidelined. Keeping the rules with strict penalties if you didn’t, was offered as the path to salvation. This presented salvation as the prize for the next world and robbed it of meaning in this one. It also served the control needs of the clerical elite of the time as it continued to do until recent times.

Thurs 20^th Feb – A Powerless Religion

For many centuries the very word healing became largely unknown in Catholic churches and for the majority it was associated with the odd miracle in Lourdes, or with some saint usually long since deceased. Religious went on retreats, people attended Mass while there was never any expectation of anything happening or of going away any different. A story is told of one priest who while visiting a nursing home was asked by a lady in a wheelchair to pray with her. Immediately after he prayed, she got out of her chair and went around showing everyone what had happened. Meanwhile the priest went into the Oratory and was heard praying, ‘Dear Jesus, please don’t ever do the likes of that to me again’. It has to be said, that what Jesus had foretold has come about in our churches that, ‘the day would come when people would hold the form of religion but deny its power.’

Fri 21^st Feb – Critique of Seminary Training

During my years of seminary training, I can scarcely remember the word healing ever being mentioned. While there, on the ground training for ministry left a lot to be desired, where our job description was to absolve sin but not to help people to grow and heal. There was no understanding of finding underlying causes of behaviour. Much of our teaching amounted to an elaborate evacuation plan for the next world. It was about people gaining enough brownie points in order to one day merit heaven. We were, by and large, being trained as dispensers of Divine justice but not ministers of compassion and healing. While in the tradition conscience was always understood to supersede all man-made laws, this was never mentioned as essential to a pastoral approach for those who found themselves outside the ‘law’. For those who had made some serious mistakes the prevailing legalistic ethos was, ‘You have made your bed, now lie on it.’ In contrast, Christ’s pastoral and compassionate approach was, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’

Sat 22^nd Feb – A Lost Opportunity

It was only in the early 1970s with the Charismatic Renewal, that the word healing began to be mentioned in churches. With its focus on a return to basics and an openness to the Holy Spirit, miracles of healing did take place. During that period the wind of the Spirit was palpable and a wonderful opportunity for spiritual renewal was being offered to the Church. Unfortunately, it was a missed opportunity because too many in authority viewed it with suspicion and cautioned the faithful to be wary and ‘not to get carried away.’ Yet, if there is any life left in our churches today it is largely a legacy from those Renewal days. Most of those who are the faithful remnant had a spiritual awakening in Charismatic Renewal, our more modern hymns come from that period and where liturgies are allowed to be creative, that too is a legacy of the Renewal Movement. Still, at the broader level, a cursory glance at the more recent Roman Missal will show where the Institutional church is at with the word healing being conspicuous by its absence. There in the long list of Masses for all sorts of occasions there is not one with the focus on healing.

Sun 23^rd Feb – Love the Enemy

The Ball of Anger

Of all the things Jesus ever said the most radical has to be ‘Love your enemy’. The Jews were a bloodthirsty race that believed themselves to be the chosen ones who had a divine mandate not just to hate but to obliterate their enemies. We see this alive and well in the Israel of today in their destruction of Gaza and their despicable treatment of the Palestinians. That statement ‘Love your enemy’ alone back there was more than enough to have him crucified.

Bearing hatred towards anyone is a serious business. It’s a sure way of allowing that person to control us. The person we feel ill-will towards ends up occupying rent-free space in our head. The one we hate is the one we think most about. To hate is to be angry and that anger seeks expression. We want to find a way to throw our anger at that person but in the meantime the question is what is it doing to ourselves?

The Buddha once said that anger is like a burning ball that we hold in our hand and while we are waiting for the right opportunity to throw it at the other it is burning away at our own flesh. So, what might that ball of anger look like and how might it be expressed in a piece of wood. The little piece shown is quite complex. While its mostly red representing anger, it also contains a lot of other colours. Inside is a six-pointed star and that is created inside a cube and then two other spheres. None of these were ever outside, but all were created from within.

Imagine someone I am angry with, and this burning ball of anger is what I am holding in my hand. Consider the pain I am causing myself. Someone has said that ‘Anger is the hurt that I inflict on myself because of someone else’s mistake’. This is the message of the OT where it says if you fail to confront someone for something unacceptable you are creating the possibility of it happening again. So often we don’t have the courage to say to someone face to face how we feel, but then we say it indirectly by cutting their socks off when we talk to someone else. In other words, we talk behind their back.

This is probably the greatest and most destructive sin in any community, to speak behind someone’s back what we are not prepared to say to his or her face. One expression of anger is gossip. A gossip is someone with an acute sense of rumour and so we say things that deep down we hope will get legs. We are not prepared to throw the ball ourselves and so we pass it to someone else to do our dirty work. This is something that has happened me on so many occasions. Someone comes with a grievance about someone and expects me to reprimand that person. I usually reply, ‘But this is your ball so why do you need me to throw it?’ Another version is where someone says, ‘So and so is annoyed with you about something but she won’t say it herself.’ To which I am inclined to reply, ‘If he or she hasn’t the courage to say it, what concern is it of yours, unless you also feel the same way and are just using the other to reinforce your own position?’

When we blame, we complain but what are we actually doing? We are throwing this ball away. Now suppose we were to turn it towards ourselves we would find that this ball is very interesting and full of creativity. What I was so willing to dump on someone else is quite valuable to myself. This is where my anger can become so creative if only, I could stop the blame game and look at it for what it is. Anger and creativity are just two sides of the same coin and if my creativity feels blocked it’s usually because I am using my anger in the wrong way. Anger in itself is not bad but it’s how I use it that gets me into trouble. To use it properly is to do something creative with all the energy it contains. I didn’t always know that I carried a lot of anger, but I do now, and the woodwork I do now is how I give that anger a creative expression.

At a basic level, even if we find ourselves in a difficult situation of not knowing how to respond to a difficult situation, if we do what appears to be the most loving thing, we are later able to live with ourselves whatever the outcome. Is when we begin to throw balls and engage in the blame game that we get into trouble because mud thrown is always ground lost?

Mon 24^th Feb – If a religion is not about healing???

The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, who has been a light in the darkness for so many for so long, is quoted as saying that ‘If religion is not about healing it really doesn’t have much to offer. Without an understanding of healing the word salvation which comes from the Latin word salus meaning wholeness becomes a matter of hoping for some delayed gratification’.

Likewise, he remarked that in his opinion, ‘If preaching doesn’t bring about some level of healing, then it’s not even the Gospel being preached.’ He believes healing ‘to be the simplest criterion for preaching the Word’. The truth he says, ‘heals and expands us in its very hearing. It allows and presses us to reconfigure the world, with plenty of room for gentleness and peace for ourselves, and for those around us. Only whole people can imagine or call forth a more whole world.’