{"id":5915,"date":"2006-09-14T13:16:22","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T13:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/cosmas-or-the-love-of-god.html"},"modified":"2006-09-14T13:16:22","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T13:16:22","slug":"cosmas-or-the-love-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/cosmas-or-the-love-of-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Cosmas, or the Love of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Manney posts on the latest entry in the Loyola Classics series<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Cosmas or the Love of God<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the latest book in the Loyola Classics series, is a short, quiet novel, written by a French banker three decades ago, about a man with a failed monastic vocation. This doesn\u2019t sound terribly exciting, but the book is a gem. The setting is La Trappe, the mother monastery of the Trappists, where a spiritual drama unfolds. Cosmas is a pious, sensitive young man who is convinced that he has a Trappist vocation. But the reality of monastic life disappoints him badly. It seems too worldly. The shortcomings of other monks scandalize him. He leaves, returns, leaves again. Cosmas is convinced that his vocation is real. His monastic superiors are inclined to think so too. It\u2019s a quandary, and Fr. Jim Martin S.J. in his introduction to the book draws out its large implications: \u201cDoes unhappiness in a job, or in a friendship, or in a marriage, mean that one should switch careers, sever a relationship or even end a marriage? This is Cosmas\u2019s dilemma. As the narrator asks, \u2018Was Cosmas really called to religious life? No other question has ever disturbed me so much.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read Fr. Martin’s intro here. (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Manney posts on the latest entry in the Loyola Classics series: Cosmas or the Love of God, the latest book in the Loyola Classics series, is a short, quiet novel, written by a French banker three decades ago, about a man with a failed monastic vocation. This doesn\u2019t sound terribly exciting, but the book…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCosmas, or the Love of God - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/cosmas-or-the-love-of-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cosmas, or the Love of God - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jim Manney posts on the latest entry in the Loyola Classics series: Cosmas or the Love of God, the latest book in the Loyola Classics series, is a short, quiet novel, written by a French banker three decades ago, about a man with a failed monastic vocation. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}