Jim Cogley: Reflections Tues 20 Aug – Mon 26 Aug 2024
Tues 20th Aug 24 – Biblical Keys to Happiness
Fifty years ago, I came to a stage where I was feeling particularly distressed while training for the priesthood in Maynooth College. One day I lay on my bed, following a lecture, and felt I must be close to a breakdown. I was riddled with self-doubt, fear and anxiety and no amount of prayer or willpower was sufficient to lift me up. Sometimes God sends angels in human form, and for me that angel was a fellow student named Roy Donovan who dropped in, looked at me and asked, ‘Jim, do you know what’s wrong with you?’ My reply was, ‘I would love to, but is there even an answer to the question?’ He said, ‘Yes, you have never learned to love yourself.’ That was it, and he just walked out of the room. It was such a profoundly simple and yet simply profound message that it felt as if scales were falling from my eyes, and I could see clearly where I had been going wrong. Of all the lessons learnt in relation to finding happiness that one has remained the most important.
Wed 21st Aug 24 – A Timely Reminder
Like so many I grew up with the importance of the commandment, Love God with all your heart and your neighbour, but the final bit ‘as you love yourself’ had either rarely been preached, or certainly was not heard by me. God was important, others were important, but I never attached any importance to myself. Until then I would have equated self-love with selfishness, whereas now I can clearly see that it is precisely lack of self-love that gives rise to selfishness and unhappiness. In order to be free of ourselves we need to first learn to love ourselves. Over the years I have retold the above story on many occasions, since it had become such a foundation stone in my life and ministry. On one such occasion, ten years later, I related it while preaching at a summer school back in Maynooth. After the talk I was shown to my room. Of the thousand or more rooms in the complex, the one I was given was the same one where I had first heard that life-changing message. There was a real sense of a divine smile of approval that the message had been heard, and of confirmation as to its ongoing importance especially in relation to the pursuit of happiness.
Thurs 22nd Aug 24 – A Publication With Purpose
The years have passed quickly and it seems appropriate to honour that little seed of happiness planted fifty years ago. And what better way to do so but to examine the tree that it has now grown into and share some of the fruits of wisdom that it now bears. From that simple word, thousands of others have been born, and it is my great pleasure to share some of them with you in a new little book called When I loved myself…….I discovered the wonder of my own magnificence. To love myself is truly to embark on one of life’s greatest and most exciting adventures. This book was written over five days, but it is truly the product of fifty years of discovery. My wish is that it will be a useful companion for those who embark on what was for me, one of the most important discoveries of my life, and the key to finding so much personal satisfaction and happiness. The book will be launched on Sunday 25th August at the 3pm outdoor Mass in Lady’s Island by the opera singer Celine Byrne. It will be available locally and later in the year can be ordered online.
Fri 23rd Aug 24 – The Basis of Self-Love
It has taken most of two thousand years for modern day psychology to catch up with the teaching of Christ about the importance of loving oneself. We might add that it has taken Christian Theology even longer! While this is foundational to all relationships, and we can never be closer to others, or God, than we are to ourselves, it still has to be based on something greater. This ‘something’ has to be the fact that we are unconditionally loved by God. It is as we practice the art of loving ourselves that we place ourselves in divine alignment with our maker. To live in alignment with what God says about us is the essence of Spirituality. If sin is to be out of divine alignment then it has to be equated to self-rejection.
Sat 24th Aug 24 – In His Will Is My True Life
70 years ago on this day I first saw the light. It was a difficult birth where my mother almost died and I came perilously close to being brain damaged. I am so deeply grateful for the life I have lived and would gladly do it all over again and even enjoy making the same mistakes! When I was ordained, it was customary to have printed on an ordination card something that was of your core belief or essence. What I choose was, ‘In His will is my true life.’ How could it be otherwise? We are created for a divine purpose with the stamp of destiny on our souls. In doing God’s will we are fulfilling ourselves and becoming who we are meant to be. Similarly in doing His will we are tapping into all our deepest talents and resources that could so easily lie dormant if we were to choose another path. It is in giving a sacred ‘yes’ to our God that we are also saying ‘yes’ to ourselves at the most profound level. To see most clearly who we truly are is only to be found in the centre of the Divine will. The further we move from that, the more we live from a false self, and inhabit the world of illusion. On this day I choose to renew my ‘yes’ and on the day I meet my maker I want that ‘yes’ to have been total and absolute.
Sun 25th Aug – It is the Spirit that Gives Life, the Flesh has Nothing to Offer
In reflecting on those words from the Gospel I have to be quite personal in terms of how they have applied to me. I don’t know when I first heard those words, but it feels as if I have always known them. The flesh represents things like being successful, having money, being popular. None of them ever held great appeal for me. We can have all of those things and still be running on empty. I feel blessed that for some reason my inner life has always been important and I have been deeply aware that when that is not right then nothing else is right either.
Being where God wanted me to be has always been of utmost importance. In all of the major decisions of my life I have followed a whisper of Spirit and there can never be a greater sense of fulfilment than knowing yourself to be in the right place at the right time. As the years have passed my awareness of God as the essence of pure love has ever deepened and my enthusiasm for the Gospel is so much greater now than it was back when I was first ordained.
The healing ministry of Christ has always been close to my heart and over the years I have experienced that healing at so many levels, especially emotional and spiritual. Back then I could not have believed that I carried so much emotional baggage and was affected by so much limited thinking. Such profound healing has gone on in my own life that at times I hardly recognize the person that I was back in my twenties.
The advantage of facing our issues and doing inner work, rather than just skimming along the surface of life, is that it releases so much vitality and energy into our lives. At seventy I now feel much more alive that when I was thirty. Even my overall health and energy levels feel so much better than back then. My body may be older but my spirit feels a lot younger. I daily choose to think and speak health and well-being and I believe this to make a difference and I hope it will long continue.
Just in case you get the impression that my life has all been plain sailing let me assure you that it was far from it. I have also known many times of loneliness, heartache and heart break, and have been broken to the point where for months I was unable to say Mass and hardly knew my own name. Looking back these were in fact the most fruitful times, even though it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. None of us can escape suffering and it too has its place. Every day at Mass I used to say; He took, he blessed; he broke and then he gave. Now I say them with awareness. In some mysterious way we need to be broken before we can be given in service.
Being in Our Lady’s Island and now here is where I believe, with every fibre of my being, that this is where the Lord wants me at this time. The Island coastline close to the present Carne was the first place where Christianity came to Ireland around 300AD and as an ancient sacred site it holds the seeds of hope for the future. I deem it a great privilege to be able to nurture those seeds and do my bit to feed the thousands who come on pilgrimage with the Word of Life.
Whether I like it or not I am now entering the latter part of my life journey. Be that short or long I will no longer die young! For these years I have adopted a line from St Paul that is both a prayer and a wish. That at the closing of the day, I may present myself before God as a man who has overcome his trials, who has no cause to be ashamed of his life’s work, and who has steered a straight course with the message of truth. While that is my prayer for myself on this my first full day being 70, it is my wish for all of you as well.
Mon 26th Aug – Letting Go of What We’re Not
A young man came to Christ asking, ‘What must I do to have eternal life’? I believe he was asking what must I do to be happy? Jesus replied, ‘Keep the commandments’. The implication here was that by not keeping them would result in misery. It turned out that these he was keeping, but he was still not happy. Herein there is a truth that simply doing what is right is important, but not necessarily the way to happiness. He was a rich man, and like so many who are wealthy, his identity lay in his riches and his pursuit of happiness until then lay in acquiring more wealth. Like the millionaire who was asked, what would make him happy, and he replied, ‘Just a little more’. Christ’s reply much have shook him to the core, ‘Go and sell what you have and in so doing you will find real riches.’ It wasn’t that he had riches but his riches had him, and in defining himself in terms of what he had, he had lost the path to true happiness.