Blessed Columba Marmion: a Saint for our Times

Recently I had the privilege of visiting my community’s mission in Luxembourg. The country of Luxembourg itself is quite small; thirty minutes suffice to drive across it from east to west, and two hours from north to south (and that only because the roads aren’t expressways). When I mentioned to my priest traveling companion that it takes nine hours to cross my home state in the US, he was astonished; nine hours in car from Luxembourg could take the driver to Spain, almost anywhere in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and more.

The country of Belgium borders Luxembourg, and less than two hours’ drive into Belgium one finds the Benedictine abbey of Maredsous. The monastery is mostly known for its beers (which was also an incentive for a visit), its architecture, and its schools. But a side chapel in the main church houses an important, if overlooked, blessed of the Church: the one-time abbot of Maredsous, Blessed Columba Marmion.

Even though my priest friend had visited the abbey before, he was unaware of the side chapel or of Marmion’s importance. As a blessed who lived through a very difficult time, he answered the challenges of his day with ingenuity, integrity, and sanctity. Although all saints give us an example of Christian living, Marmion in particular offers us some insights for living in a complicated and confused world.

From Ireland to Belgium

Born on April 1st, 1858, (Marmion commented later he was “born a genuine fool!”) in Dublin, Ireland, to an Irish father and a French mother, Joseph Aloysius Marmion entered the seminary, studying both in Dublin and in Rome, and was ordained a diocesan priest in 1881. However, after a visit to the Benedictine monastery in Maredsous, Belgium, he felt a calling to the cloistered life of the abbey.

Since Columba was a good professor and spiritual director, his bishop delayed the decision to release him to the monastic life. Even close friends very bluntly told him they didn’t think he’d last as a monk. When he was finally granted leave to enter the monastery, he took the religious name Columba after the famous Irish monk. We are reminded here that God’s designs are always accomplished: our task is to seek out His will and work with Him, even if it requires patience to do so. Our challenge is to be faithful.

His life in the novitiate was very difficult, even “traumatic” as one biographer noted. Marmion was a bright theologian and already a priest; here, he was dropped to the bottom rung, working in a language that wasn’t his native tongue, and with a superior who really wanted to try him. Indeed, after the novitiate, his novice master asked him what was the most difficult thing he had to put up with as a novice, and Columba simply replied, “You, Reverend Father.” (Irish wit at its finest!)

In one of those ironic displays of Providence, his first assignment after his solemn profession was as assistant master of novices. However, what was especially challenging was a desolation that plagued him as soon as he entered the monastery. The blessed would later write: “For over 10 years, I felt a strong desire to become a monk; it was my dream, my ideal. As soon as I entered the monastery, all went dark; I felt as though I were suspended in space, deprived of all that I loved. This it is that gives merit to our cry of ‘Lord, we have left all things and followed Thee.’”

Even with that feeling of emptiness and abandonment in his soul, Marmion once prayed: “And yet, my Jesus, I know that You desire me here. And so I would rather let myself be hacked to pieces than leave the monastery.”

Just because we know what God’s will is, and even though we are in the process of accomplishing it, doesn’t mean that we will always have overwhelming joy. Following Christ is difficult at times, but if we are sure we are following the path He has traced out for us, the grace to persevere will be there.

The Beginnings of a Fruitful Apostolate

However, even in the midst of that desolation, an interior fire was burning brightly; a nearby parish requested a preacher from the abbey for a major feast, since their preacher had backed out at the last minute. The abbot apologized but said he only had a young Irish monk whose French “was far from perfect.” Marmion was sent, but when the pastor returned with him to the abbey three days later, he told the abbot, “We have never had such a preacher before in my parish.”

Soon the other parishes began requesting Columba to come and preach, imperfect French notwithstanding, and his fame spread. God can make use of us, even if we are not the most qualified, the most talented, or the most respectable. What others have need of is not so much us, but Christ; we are simply the instruments that bring Christ to others.

Eventually Columba would help found a monastery in Louvain, becoming its first prior. He served as a professor of theology, confessor, chaplain, and spiritual director, and fulfilled many other responsibilities before he was called to become prior of the abbey at Maredsous. There he oversaw more than 100 monks, a humanities college, a trade school, and a farm. However, he always made time to preach retreats and give spiritual direction, often by letter.

Indeed, as Pope John Paul II pointed out in the homily for Marmion’s beatification, amid the trials of the First World War, Columba’s “sole comfort . . . was preaching and giving spiritual direction.” Dom Columba died during a flu epidemic on January 30th, 1923 at the age of 65. In the midst of chaos in the world and even a pandemic, it was in Christ that Marmion found his strength.

An Example to Saints

While Blessed Columba Marmion might have been forgotten by many, his writings and example have provided inspiration for numerous saints. His book Union with God (the collection of his letters of spiritual direction) was one of Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s favorites, and there is a story that, as the papal helicopter flew over Maredsous on the way from Belgium to Beauraing, Pope Saint John Paul the Second told an aide, “I owe more to Columba Marmion for initiating me into things spiritual than to any other spiritual writer.”

Fr Philippon, O.P., would write of the blessed abbot: “Dom Marmion’s providential mission was to bring the source of modern spirituality back to the person itself of Christ,” which explains why almost (if not all) of his works have the title, “Christ”, followed by an explanatory subtitle: Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, Christ, the Ideal of the Priest, Christ in His Mysteries.

In 1901 Marmion said to his Abbot: “I have understood that the precious pearl of which the Gospel speaks is Jesus Christ.” “If someone asks me: in what does spiritual life consist? I reply: Jesus Christ!” Elsewhere he writes: “Grace is nothing else than the life of Christ in the soul.”

It is this return to Christ as the model and source of holiness which is so pertinent for today. Humans fail, challenges (like pandemics) come and go, but Christ remains the same. Perhaps this is the most important lesson we can learn from Blessed Columba: to trust in Christ, to seek our comfort and solace in Him, and hence to bear difficulties with joy.