Fr Jim Cogley
At a personal level yesterday was a joyful anniversary, while today is one of a different nature. As an eleven year old I came home from school to discover my dad had just died from a heart attack. It was naturally a life-changing event made worse by the fact that it happened at a time of transition from childhood into teenage years. Having been told ‘big men don’t cry’ I carried unresolved grief for years. Trying to come to terms with the pain of loss, at a time when I could have done with his shoulders to support me into adult life, was like a ‘divine wounding’. Dad’s death forced me to pray and ask questions about the big issues of life and death long before I would normally have done so. It brought me to a place of spiritual awakening, so that seven years later while still only sixteen, I was utterly convinced the Lord had a wonderful plan for my life and that surrender was the only way it would be revealed, and that was the way forward. The tragedy of my fathers passing was, in the divine economy not wasted, but opened the gift of awareness as to what I was being called to do.