Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 14 April – Mon 20 April 2026
An event not to be missed: Next Friday, April 17th, at 7.30pm in the Edmund Rice Healing & Heritage Centre, Callan there will be a unique opportunity to engage in a close and personal way with one of Irelands best known singers. Celine Byrne will share her story and sing many of her favorite songs in this intimate setting. Spaces will be limited to 180 so make sure you book your ticket (Cost €20) with Jim Maher on 086-1276649. Early booking is advised.
Tues 14th April – The Mountain of the Lord
The mountain in Scripture is understood as the place of encounter with God. On Mt. Sinai Moses received the 10 Commandments. Mt Tabor was the place of Transfiguration. Looking at the photo of a lone climber making his way up the mountain can be viewed as the spiritual journey. We may think of a few lines from one of the psalms: ‘Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord’? and the answer is given as:
‘The one with clean hands and a pure heart
who desires not worthless things,
Who does no wrong to his brother.
And casts no slur against his neighbour.’
In the end it’s all about behaviour and there is no mention of religious affiliation.
Can we not accept that there are as many ways to the top of the mountain as there are climbers? All may set out from different places at the bottom but as we journey to the top the closer we come to each other.
Wed 15th April – Understanding Sin
Our Celtic roots tells us that God is everywhere, in all things and yet above all things. This is what I now believe, that God is at the heart of all His creation and it is in the depths of creation that we find Him. This has changed my understanding of sin away from the usual ‘hot potatoes’ of inappropriate actions to a refusal to go deep. Sin is to live a superficial life where we just skim the surface and are not prepared to look beneath. This is where we live in what the Buddhists call Maya or the world of illusion, the world of passing things, which we so cling to as if they were going to last. Our experience is that real life is never found on the surface but only by going deep. Jesus told his early disciples to pull out into the deep in order to find a big catch. Staying in the shallow waters of life is never the place to catch the big fish that are needed to nourish the human heart.
Thurs 16th April – Perennial Wisdom
The ornate segmented vase, composed of six sections, each with different colours, represents the different mainstream world religions. They all appear to be coming from a large blue diamond in the middle that reflects the eternal wisdom that was there long before any of them were ever heard of. These are spiritual principles that are true for every faith. It was through this original experience that the founders of all faiths were united, while at superstructure level they, and more often their followers, fought about their differences. This eternal wisdom is the purest essence of reality. While all religions are born of this, they often deviate a long way away from it. Only insofar as they continue to teach from this purest of fountains do they have anything useful to offer.
Fri 17th April – What life is about?
Eternal wisdom is the presence of God in all things and the goal of life is to come to this realization. The sole purpose of all religions is to serve this universal quest. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts. Then when we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the Divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all individuals, all creatures, and all of life. This is the awareness that changes everything.
Sat 18th April – In God’s Middle
A young boy was fishing with his father when he asked ‘Dad, where is granny’? The father replied, ‘Your Gran is in with God.’ ‘But where is God,’ he asked? ‘God is as high as you can go and He’s as low as you can go. He’s as far North as you can go and as far South as you can go. He’s as far East as you can go, and He’s as far West as you can go.’ ‘Then that means I am right in God’s middle’, said the child. Anyone who has made this supreme discovery lives with an unbroken awareness of the presence of God in all creatures. They live the reality of unfailing compassion, fearlessness, equanimity, and the unshakable knowledge, based on direct, personal experience, that all the treasures and pleasures of this world together are worth nothing, if one has not found the diamond at the centre of the soul.
Sun 19th April – The Emmaus Road
The Emmaus story is really about two disciples trying to make sense of the death of Jesus. At least they are talking and that is a big step because when we go into isolation we get lost and can’t make sense of anything. The stranger joins them and they tell him their story of disappointment and shattered hopes. There are two things they can’t hold together, the death of Jesus and their hope in him. His death has cancelled out their hope. They are hopeless and helpless.
How could the death of Jesus be understood as anything more than a tragic end to a life so full of promise? Death is the end of the road of promise and it’s also the death of their relationship with him. They are now ex-disciples of a dead prophet and their faces match their story. One translation says that their faces were twisted with grief.
Like so many, they have heard of the resurrection, some women have reported their experience at the empty tomb, but it has not yet become real for them. They fail to recognize the stranger who walks by their side as Christ. Why? I would think for the very good reason that they are still living Good Friday and not Easter Sunday. Like so many, what had happened in the past had robbed them of hope for the future and they had no eyes to see life in the present.
What does Christ do? He invited them to tell the story of what has happened and how it has affected them, even though he knows it all too well. Then he proceeds to place their small story into a much bigger context. Was it not ordained that the Christ would suffer in order to enter into his glory. In so doing he helps them to find meaning in what has taken place. Finding their place in the bigger picture had the effect of setting their hearts on fire.
That’s the beauty of the Scriptures. When the Word is broken properly in a life-giving way and not treated in an academic manner it can literally set us on fire with enthusiasm. I attended scripture lectures for six years in Maynooth and never once came away inspired, it was just boring academic and historical. I even have a degree in the stuff that means absolutely nothing. Then one day I heard a woman explore just one passage and it just changed my life. I also realized that if such riches could be found in just one parable then the entire Bible was a treasure throve just waiting to be discovered. That woman had awakened in me a lifelong love of the Scriptures.
For that reason, I made a resolution that when I became a priest and was saying Mass I would never, if at all possible, miss an opportunity to break the Word and in a way that relates to life. I always deem it a great privilege to be able to offer insight, hope and meaning because that is my own experience of the Word. I don’t even deem it as having to preach every day, rather it’s just a joy to be able to share the Word of Life. Now 34 years later it’s still more a joy than ever and my heart is still burning with enthusiasm. It’s always an unspoken wish that my Love for the Bible would become infectious and that others would be drawn to read the Bible and find what I have found for themselves. To a fair extent it did happen in Kilmore Quay where nearly twenty people used to meet for Bible study once a week for twelve years and it made such a difference to their lives. As Brendan Comiskey our former bishop used to say, when we die and meet the Lord I wonder will he ask the question, ‘Did you ever read my book?’
Mon 20th April
‘I am the Way the Truth and the Life,
No one can come to the Father except through me’.
This quote of Jesus from St John’s Gospel is one that many Christians struggle to understand as it seems to be exclusive and deny the validity of all other faiths and so to justify all forms of proselytising. On the surface this would seems to be the case. However, if we see Jesus as the one who has fulfilled God’s idea of what it means to be a fully realized human being, then we can interpret it in a different light. All faiths share our common humanity and while it would appear that their role was to lead people to God, their more basic purpose is to lead their followers into the fulness of what it means to be human. This then becomes the Way and the Truth that leads to Life – to journey to God through the embrace of our human reality. If we were to evaluate any faith, particularly our own, against this backdrop we begin to see clearly how much we have lost our way.