Blessed Columba Marmion is renowned as a spiritual master because of his books, especially his magnum opus Christ, the Life of the Soul. He earned that status the hard way, through a life of obedience.
When he suffered frustration and trouble in his ministry early on, “His sole comfort during this period was preaching and giving spiritual direction,” reported the Vatican when he was beatified in 2000. His great joy was his apostolate of leading retreats, often to religious sisters.
Blessed Columba’s vocation started out in one direction, and ended in another.
He was born Joseph Aloysius Marmion in Dublin in 1858 to a committed Catholic family — three of his sisters entered convents. He was always devoted to the Church, and at age 17 he gave early witness to his faith by donating a large sum of money he had saved for years to a woman burdened by debt.
Marmion entered the diocesan seminary in Dublin dreaming of being a missionary in Australia but ended his seminary studies in Rome because the archbishop had noticed his talent and had big plans for him. Marmion’s plans shifted again in 1881 when he visited a Benedictine abbey in Belgium. He heard a heavenly voice tell him, “It is here I want you.”
After he was ordained, he spent five years at various archdiocesan assignments before permission was granted for him to join that abbey — Maredsous in Anhée, Belgium.
It was at Maredsous that he took the name Columba, after the great Irish saint whose work of conversion in Ireland and Scotland later generations judged equal to — and some say greater than — that of St. Patrick.
Marmion’s novitiate was very difficult, as he felt a spiritual darkness fill his soul.
The new monk was 30 years old when he entered the abbey alongside much younger novices, and it was difficult to simultaneously learn new customs, a new language, and a new way of life. But he reasoned that learning obedience was the whole point of the exercise, so he gave himself to the life.
He impressed the abbot at Maredsous enough that, after taking vows, he was sent to Louvain as the founding prior of a new monastery there. This is where he set a pattern he would follow his whole life of leading retreats and serving as spiritual director to his own Benedictines, as well as others, including the Carmelite sisters in Louvain and the future Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier.
The voice he had heard before ordination proved prophetic when he returned to Maredsous as abbot in 1909 and remained in charge through the First World War, which the Vatican calls “his life’s great ideal.” During the war he had to evacuate young monks from German-occupied Belgium, leading them to Ireland while disguised as a cattle rancher.
He returned to Maredsous, where he died in 1923.
But if you have only read Columba’s books, you might have a wrong impression of him.
His works are meticulous and rigorous — made even more so by a strict and pious secretary — so it can be a surprise to learn that Marmion was known for his sense of humor.
To cite a few examples: When Marmion completed his novitiate, his novice master asked him what the most difficult part of the experience was. “You were, sir,” he answered. He also joked with a priest friend, who he said was getting fat, telling him “Your head is taking the shape of a mitre”— a bishop’s hat. Marmion also once remarked to a friend about a convent conference he was giving: “I have to instruct a large congregation of antiquated virginity this evening.”
But he was absolutely serious about his life’s work. He was world-renowned, writing books based on his retreat conferences that were translated into seven languages. His best-known book, Christ the Life of the Soul, explores how baptism draws Christians into adoption in Christ.
“His ongoing care of the community did not stop Dom Marmion from preaching retreats or giving regular spiritual direction,” said the Vatican, adding that Marmion “was asked to help the Anglican monks of Caldey when they wished to convert to Catholicism.”
Religious houses greatly appreciate the retreat masters who serve them.
One convert who appreciated retreats was Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. She saw her Sisters’ spiritual exercises as so important that some of her most dramatic letters concern them. She wrote to Archbishop John Carroll regularly about who should be assigned to her Sisters’ retreats — and wrote in defense of a priest who had resigned as a retreat master after one of her letters.
Retreats were clearly a highlight for Mother Seton. She described her Sisters’ preparations for one in an 1810 letter: “We are to have a retreat in June and our rule has now strictly begun. A thousand million Benedictions!”
A year and a half later, she described how a retreat had affected her Sisters: “Between the Adoration of Midnight and the Mass of four o’clock — what moments, our Father! — our happy retreat ended. The flame of love ascending, every innocent heart beating!”
Irish Benedictine Abbot Columba McCann says that the spiritual wisdom of his namesake continues to benefit those in religious life in the 21st century.
“There may be times when our own lives seem on the verge of collapse or we may be fooled into thinking our Church is about to collapse. That’s when Blessed Columba would have us look at the bigger picture: we have merged with Christ, with his death and resurrection. We are given his strength and he carries our weaknesses,” he wrote in 2018.
Mother Seton and Blessed Columba were also both prolific letter writers.
Mother Seton wrote often to family, friends, and other religious sisters about their life in Christ. You can see her handiwork on display in the Seton Shrine in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Abbot McCann described Marmion’s letter-writing apostolate this way: “Blessed Columba used to receive dozens of letters asking for spiritual advice,” he said. “Again and again he used to tell people to lean on Christ. He was very fond of those words of Jesus … pointing out that Jesus didn’t say, ‘apart from me you won’t achieve much.’ He said, ‘apart from me you can do nothing.’ So Blessed Columba would have us lean on Christ.”
That is the ultimate message of the life’s work of both Mother Seton and Blessed Columba. You must retreat in order to advance — as long as you retreat into Christ.
TOM HOOPES, autor más reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitrión de La extraordinaria Story podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco ya está disponible en Audible. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comité de Medios y Arbitrios de la Cámara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pasó 10 años como editor del periódico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.
Image: Blessed Columba Marmion. Public Domain.