Beloved of God and Men: The Feast of Blessed Columba Marmion

Blessed Columba Marmion is one of the secondary patrons of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle (Silverstream Priory). Although most of Ireland celebrated his feast day on the third of October, that was for us the feast of another secondary patron, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face and so Blessed Columba Marmion is celebrated today.

For the 100th anniversary of Blessed Columba Marmion’s dies natalis, his death in this world and “birthday” into eternal life, our monastery’s press, Cenacle Press published a fascinating set of essays on the beloved Irish Benedictine abbot whose writings are considered by many as comparable to those of the Holy Doctors and were once the constant study of most all Irish priests. In honour of Blessed Marmion’s feast, we are pleased to post the preface of this book.

IN THE HUNDRED YEARS THAT HAVE passed since Blessed Columba Marmion’s death in 1923, his contributions to the Church as handed down in his books, letters, and example have only become increasingly relevant and necessary. It would seem a sufficient contribution even if we only were to mention that Marmion opened the door to two of the greatest saints in the last hundred and fifty years, St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Teresa of Calcutta. For St Thérèse, it was to Marmion that Pius XI went to ask whether she should be beatified; for St Teresa of Calcutta, Marmion’s writings were those dearest to her and those which most helped her through her decades of darkness. Yet the treasury that Marmion left to us goes far beyond these two saints, and his is a light waiting to be rediscovered that it might illuminate the Church once again.

Born in Dublin in 1858, Joseph Marmion was the seventh of nine children. His birth followed the deaths of two of his older brothers, both of whom died in their infancy. Begging the intercession of St Joseph, Marmion’s parents were blessed with their third boy whom they consecrated to God’s service and named Joseph in thanksgiving for the great saint’s intercession. His consecration to God took its first step towards being fully realized in 1881 when he was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin. After an intellectually active seminarian formation and several years spent studying in Rome, Marmion’s early priestly life was spent not only in the academic halls for which his lively intellect so well suited him, but also in ministering to prisoners, both male and female. The experiences that he underwent in serving these prisoners shaped him for the rest of his life, for, as Marmion’s biographer, Dom Raymond Thibaut, writes: his service ‘aroused in him the sense of merciful compassion . . .. He loved these protégées of his and felt a strange consolation in pouring balm from his priestly hands on their wounds’.^[1] Indeed, in this ministry to the outcasts of society, he became particularly attuned to the infinite mercy of God.

After some years serving as priest in the Archdiocese of Dublin, in 1886 Marmion took the next step in realizing his consecration to God when he answered the call to leave ‘his country, his kindred, and his father’s house’ (Gen. 12:1) in order to give himself irrevocably to God in monastic life. On November 21st, 1886, Marmion entered the Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium and received the name Columba, that of the great missionary-monk of Ireland. For the next two decades, Marmion grew and developed into the ‘chosen arrow’ of God: first through the many trials and humiliations of a difficult novitiate and early monastic life, then through his move to Maredsous’ foundation of Mont-César in Louvain where Marmion was named Prior, theology professor, and spiritual director to the monks. Having been formed through these decades of experience, Marmion eventually was elected as abbot of his parent monastery of Maredsous in 1909, an office he would retain until his death in 1923.

In the last decade of his life and for several more after his death, the great abbot of Maredsous was renowned throughout all of Europe and the Americas for his uniquely powerful spiritual teaching, his undaunted governance of the great Beuronese Abbey of Maredsous, and his incomparable Irish wit and wisdom. It is thus a great tragedy that this preeminent figure of the Church in the first half of the century fell away from memory in the second half. Yet despite the layers of ash burying any knowledge of this saint, his wisdom remains as glowing embers, ready to ignite with the flame of Divine Charity anyone who approaches his writings, which, as Pope Benedict XV declared, contain ‘the pure doctrine of the Church’.

Just as Marmion’s writings were dilectus Deo et hominibus, ‘beloved of God and men’, so too was the man himself. Like the great patriarchs and saints of all times, he knew God face to Face, knew Him as his greatest friend. Only from this Fountain of Life could Marmion hope to supply nourishment for the souls entrusted to his care; only if he beheld God’s Light could his monks benefit from his lights. So, following in the path of St Benedict, Marmion devoted himself ‘more to profit than to preside’ over the people he governed.

Although all of Marmion’s published works come from his time as abbot of Maredsous in the 1910s, the teaching that is presented in these works— Christ, The Life of the Soul, Christ in His Mysteries, Christ, The Ideal of the Monk, Sponsa Verbi, and Christ, The Ideal of the Priest (published posthumously)—had been carried with him from the earliest days of his priestly and monastic life. From the very beginning, Marmion’s interior and exterior life focused on God’s merciful Fatherhood; the place of the soul as beloved child of God; abandonment to His providential care; the ineffable indwelling of the Trinity in the soul; and the centrality of the liturgy in the spiritual life of the Church as well as that of each individual. Through these movements of grace, God was guiding Marmion’s heart towards a teaching not unlike that of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Yet not only was his comprehensive view of the spiritual life to be developed parallel to that of St Thérèse, but it also found echoes in other saints of that period, such as St Elizabeth of the Trinity, St Charles de Foucauld, and St Pius X. Rarely does God raise up saints who stand alone, and in His providential timing, Marmion would share in the great currents of spiritual thought that were running through the turn of the twentieth century. Yet in a masterful way, Marmion’s writings contain their entire scope, embracing them all and helping to undergird them. With incomparable clarity and simplicity, Marmion lays out the great vista of sanctity, the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’ (Eph. 3:8), and traces its sublime path to God.

It was a great blessing to the Church, then, when Pope St John Paul II beatified Columba Marmion on September 3rd, 2000. As the pope said: ‘Marmion left us an authentic treasure of spiritual teaching for the Church of our time. In his writings he teaches a simple yet demanding way of holiness for all the faithful, whom God has destined in love to be His adopted children through Jesus Christ.’^[2] Twenty-three years later, this statement still rings true.

The essays contained in the present volume are a testament to this fact for they demonstrate the great breadth of souls that Blessed Marmion speaks to even down to our own day and age. From Marmion’s doctrine based upon our spiritual adoption by the Father to the centrality of Christ’s mysteries lived and participated in through the Church’s liturgy; from his firm foundation in Scripture, particularly the writings of St Paul, to his absolute adherence to the teachings of the Church, particularly as transmitted by St Thomas Aquinas; from his exposition of the beauty and goodness of the religious life to his care for the universal call to holiness; and from his soaring insights into the great heights of Truth to his dwelling in the particularities of each individual and each circumstance, all with an eminently human touch, Marmion has something to say to ‘all the faithful’. To each Marmion offers Christ: ‘Christ today, yesterday, and forever’ (Heb. 13:8). With a heart attuned to and beating with the heart of the Church, Christ’s beloved Bride, Marmion presents to us Christ contemplated, loved, and lived, not with a theoretical knowledge, but with a real and lively faith. The Church is gifted but rarely with souls so comprehensive as to reach all of Her children, but there is no doubt that Blessed Columba Marmion was one such soul: a soul beloved of both God and men.

It is our prayer that the present volume will share more widely the teaching and writings of Blessed Columba Marmion, the ‘pure doctrine of the Church’, so as to enrich all God’s children with the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to rekindle the hearts of the faithful through one who is undoubtedly a saint for our times.