Fr Jim Cogley
Spiritual awakening usually doesn’t happen without considerable pain and suffering. Like all birthings it is a messy business and always comes as a death blow to our ego that doesn’t want to give up easily. In the world of nature, so many birds, like the eagle, will first build a secure and comfortable nest for their chicks but as soon as the fledglings are ready to fly, they will destroy the nest thereby forcing the young to make the leap of faith and fly for themselves. Our secure comfortable world may need to be turned upside down before, in terms of faith, it will be right side up and we are prepared to begin our journey into the unknown. In the Scriptures a divine wounding often precedes a noble life. We find in the Book of Genesis that Jacob had to wrestle with the angel of his shadow and end up with his hip dislocated. It was this painful divine wounding that left his ego so mortally wounded that he had a limp for the rest of his life. However it didn’t seem to matter, because it was from there on that he could exercise his Spirit wings.