Every man, every woman, is an image of God, unique and unrepeatable. In some immeasurable way we are, each of us, like God. God reveals himself to us in those around us, showing us His mystery and His wonder, which is why each human being is mysterious, and in a way immeasurable.

God calls each one of us in life. Every one of us has a vocation. In the first place, God calls each one of us into existence. And then he calls each one of us to be what he wants us to be in life, and to do what he wants each one of us to do. The saints are those he calls to be an example to the rest of us. Their role is to teach us, by what they say and do, how to imitate Christ in our own time and circumstances. Christ is the complete pattern for all of us, in his fulfillment of the Father's will. The saints show us how to recognise this pattern in our own world. It is through the circumstances of every day that God leads us to the following of this pattern in our own time and place.

There is a photograph of Joseph Marmion's family, taken when he was a young boy, which is reproduced in Father Mark Tiemey's biography. All the members of the family have been carefully arranged, most likely in a photographer's studio, the parents dignified - the father clearly smiling and in good humour, with a degree of relaxation which is not common in photos of the time. The children are attractive and lovable as only young people can be, the girls elegant in elaborate and voluminous dresses. The three boys are the youngest in the group, Joseph, the eldest of these, clearly dressed in the black he always wore, because it was already decided that he would prepare for the priesthood. All through Europe it was a time of economic progress and development for the middle classes, and they took themselves seriously everywhere. Irish Catholics took their religious practise with great seriousness. Their faith was strong, and the memory of persecution, and second-class status on account of it, was very recent. Their Catholic faith influenced their outlook on every detail of their lives in a way which would surprise most of us today. My own great-grandfather, who would have been an exact contemporary of Joseph Marmion's father, like him too, a countryman come to Dublin, and like him comfortably prosperous in business, would not buy a house because he believed, in St. Paul's words, that we have no lasting city in this life, and he equally rejected the idea of life insurance, which was new at that time, because he considered that to insure one’s life was to bet against God, which would not be right. He clearly remembered the news of Catholic Emancipation when it was first passed in Parliament. They counted their blessings carefully in those days. Infant mortality was high in all classes. The illusion of security which we enjoy through modern medicine was unknown to any of them. Joseph Marmion studied for the priesthood, and studied well, and was seen as promising material for a life of learning, and perhaps much higher things, as time went on. Who could tell?

Our interest at this moment is in Joe Marmion' s vocation, and I think we need to take stock how he has got to this stage. To begin with, we have that surprising fact, surprising at least to a modern mind, that his parents dressed him all life long in black, because they were convinced that he would study for the priesthood. That seems a chancy sort of thing. Anyone who has ever been concerned with preparing candidates for the priesthood, knows how difficult it can be to discern a vocation, in other words how difficult to decide whether a genuine, free, and conscious choice has been made by the student Does he know what he is doing? And is the choice his own? If too much influence has been exercised by either parent, or both, even with the best intentions, it may not make for happiness and understanding later on. God's ways are mysterious, but we must not presume. God wants us to use our commonsense in the ordinary way, even where holy things are concerned. Most vocations do come through the home, and therefore through the parents, even if they are only made clear in later life. The atmosphere of the home is the parents' doing, and their faith will be the background which God's will can be most clearly recognised and learned. From centuries back, in medieval times, religious houses were well used to "pueri oblati" - "offered children, whose parents had given them to monasteries and convents at a very early age, hoping, and in many cases presuming, that they would fit in successfully in those surroundings all their lives It often worked - there is no doubt of that. But in more modern times even when Joe Marmion was at school, his parents seem almost to have been pushing things a bit There is some evidence that his clothes caused some comment from his companions. But he took it well, and seems to have been contented with what was already planned for him. In fact God was clearly increasing his faith from an early age.

Joe seems to have thought often about life in a religious community, even though he studied for the diocesan priesthood. The result was that he had an awareness of both ways of doing things, the individual work of the priest in a parish and diocesan affairs as well as the experience and understanding of religious life which was to be so thoroughly complete by the time he could even write a classic study of it such as 'Christ the life of the Monk' Nonetheless we could be tempted to think of his entering Clonliffe as a sort of diversion from his true path, a distraction from the main road he was called to follow. This is where we would be mistaken, both concerning Joe Marmion's vocation, and our own While we cannot presume to read God's thoughts, I believe it is essential to recognise the purpose of what 'happens to us', as we might think of it, in life, and to learn to appreciate the extent to which the faithful soul is guided in decisions and choices in order to contribute to the ultimate fulfilment of God's will and the completion of the work intended for the life of each one. I am thinking here of the 'Faithful Soul', by whom I mean the ordinary man or woman who does their best to serve God faithfully, and to carry out God's will. In other words the vast majority of ordinary Catholics. It is not necessary, and in fact it is not at all helpful, to see the lives of those who in later times have been recognised as saints, in terms of constantly heroic decisions and initiatives. We must all grow up, and in life we must all be lead. That's how life works. Any young person who fell completely outside this pattern would be something of a freak. Joe Marmion was a thoroughly natural boy. Joe was accepted as a student for Clonliffe at the age of fifteen and a half. That was quite normal. Third-level education, in whatever form, usually begun in those days at the age of sixteen.

Joe was apparently awarded a 'scholarship'. It would be interesting to know what this amounted to. Was it simply an admission to the college, or did it mean that he didn't have to pay fees? Or rather, that his family didn't have to pay fees? The point is important. The Marmion family was comfortably off, but they were not rich. During Joe's time in Clonliffe his father died. From then on there would have been constant concern about money. Three of his sisters entered religious life, and dowries of some sort were probably expected. In Clonliffe there was always a concern to help student' families by alleviation of fees as far as possible, reducing them progressively as ordination approached. No doubt these factors were weighed when Joe was sent to Rome, halfway through his theology course, as endowments might have been available to help out there.

In all, Joe spent scarcely two years in Rome. Arriving in Clonliffe with a good grounding in Latin and Greek from Belvedere, he had done well in his studies, and he was considered in Rome to be among the better students. Immediately after ordination, at the age of twenty-three, he was called back to Dublin. There seems to have been some concern about his health, but he must have been keen to see his family again, after two years' absence, and the diocese had need of his services. It was at this time that he first came in contact with Benedictine monasticism, first on a visit to Monte Cassino, and then on a visit to Maredsous in Belgium, while journeying home to Dublin. Maredsous made a deep impression on him. His inclination to community life received a new impetus at that time.

Joe's first appointment was as a curate in Dundrum, where he stayed a year, with chaplaincy duties at the central mental hospital, and at Mount Annville. It is a notable testimony to his qualities that he was remembered. Few young priests receive that tribute in their first year of ministry.

From Dundrum he was appointed to the staff of Clonliffe College. This was almost certainly to his liking, as he had a gift for the sort of teaching involved, and the college would have afforded him the opportunity for further reading and study, to which he was equally inclined. He acted as chaplain to the recently founded Redemptoristine Convent close by, where the contemplative life of the enclosed community will also have made an impression. He remained in Clonliffe for four years.

Clonliffe was a new college -just twenty-three years old when Fr. Joe came on the staff, - and there must have been a good deal of the enthusiasm that goes with new beginnings. His duties were probably stimulating, but very demanding. There were standards set by others to be measured up to, and the preparation of courses would have made great demands on anyone as conscientious as he was. But life there cannot fail to have been full of interest. Still those four years were undoubtedly a time of searching and decision. The question of his future direction in the priesthood, since he had already taken an interest in monastic life, and since, as we know, he subsequently followed the call in that direction, must have been constantly in his mind. By ordination he was called to serve in Dublin diocese, and at the ordination ceremony, like every other priest, he promised obedience and loyalty to Dublin's archbishop. The decision to 'change course', so to speak, was a huge one, and he can have had little peace of mind while he was coming to make it. He must have thought through a formidable number of issues at this time, between his intense studies for teaching purposes, and the very real struggle to see what was the right way forward. He was successful, and well appreciated, where he was. His work was needed, and his archbishop and those in authority over him counted on his loyalty. His family, now without a father, counted on him for some support and a considerable leadership. The way ahead can only have been found in the midst of great perplexity. But find it he did. He broke with everything around him, and went to Maredsous. It says a lot for all concerned that, while there were regrets on all sides to be overcome, his leaving was accompanied by goodwill on the part of all who knew him. There is no record of any resentment at his going, so far as I am aware.

There is a certain role in society filled by those whose position, usually in training or instructing others, calls on them to put other people to the test, to try them out. I sometimes thank God that I have never had to fill this role myself. The idea of 'trying other people out' fills me with horror. On coming to Maredsous, Joe Marmion met an outsize specimen of that particular race - his novice master, Dom Benoit D'Hondt. It can't have helped, at one level, that Dom Benoit was clearly a man of the most irreproachable virtue, the very picture of asceticism and self-denial. You couldn't fault him on anything - but he could fault you. In fact, that was his job. It's clear Columba Marmion, as we have to call him from now on, had as difficult a time in adjusting to his new country as anyone ever did. There is a certain Flemish heavy-footedness, and a certain Wallonian intensity, that seem to combine in varying proportions to make the Belgian temperament. I hope I don't sound too prejudiced. As a nation, I consider the Belgians have varied and most wonderful gifts. I admire their art and architecture, and a marvellous cosmopolitanism of theirs, very greatly. But they are not Irish - and I am sure Father Marmion discovered his own Irishness, probably to his dismay, in a way he had never done before, at this time. There was such serious business to be done - and his monastic companions were so serious about doing it - and he himself had a simply irrepressible sense of fun. It's very clear, from things that others said about him, that there were times they weren't sure what to make of him. In the last analysis this can only have meant considerable suffering, until all concerned had learned to know and appreciate one another. But learn they did - in the long run. It can all be dressed up in pious prose when writing the lives of saints, but it is all so normal, and so natural, and something we have all gone through at one time or another, when everything is said and done. It was the making of him. And after three unimaginably demanding years of it he was accepted, and valued for his qualities and gifts.

And then they sent him to Louvain. Here there was what amounted to a daughter house of Maredsous, in the new house at Mont Cesar which was shortly to be made an abbey in its own right. Here were sent young monks from Maredsous, to learn Philosophy and Theology at the famous University there. And here is where I find something altogether intriguing: for here was our hero - in the storyteller's expression - under new circumstances and after so much had happened in the meantime - back at essentially the same task he had left behind him in Clonliffe. He is once more directing students and guiding them in many ways, and he is once more doing chaplaincy duties to communities of nuns, and, as ever, much appreciated in both capacities. It may well be that the whole thing was now raised to a more exalted level and more elaborate than it had been in Dublin. Dom Columba was made prior of the new foundation and given perhaps an authority he had not had before. He now had contacts in a famous theological faculty of a sort that Dublin could not match in those times, and he gave much appreciated retreats and conferences to religious, of a quality he could not have matched in earlier and less experienced years in Ireland, but the Gospel is the Gospel, and souls are souls, whether simple or sophisticated, and while the Lord himself had undoubtedly guided him to foreign shores, he was put to the same tasks once again, for which the grace of God and his own natural gifts so particularly suited him. His vocation was the same - the surroundings were utterly different. God doesn't change his mind. We change our own so many times.

Spiritual progress demands of us all a progressive renunciation of everything we have and are. This is accomplished in the life of everyone, but for each in different ways. In going to Mont Cesar Columba Marmion was asked to transfer the 'stability' he had promised to the Abbey of Maredsous and attach it now to this new house. It was, in principle, a permanent commitment, and thus a permanent renunciation. It must have cost him dearly. And then, after ten years, he was brought back, this time as Abbot to the Benedictine monastery he had first entered. It was a formidable assignment, to head this foundation which aspired to so much prestige and standing in its church and country. We are used, in Ireland, to religious foundations which begin in poverty and build slowly and haphazardly as circumstances permit. Maredsous was richly endowed from the start, and rose a great and impressive building, as fast as the builders could work. When its second Abbot, this still barely acclimatised Irishman, took over, it was already a great community of over a hundred monks. Soon they asked him for another renunciation. It did not seem suitable, at a time when nations were beginning to distrust each other and to sense the coming of war, that the superior of such a notable house should be an outsider. He became a naturalised Belgian.

And then war came. And here again his vocation. His very Irishness was demanded once again. Disguised as a cattle dealer -1 would love to have seen him – he made his way from occupied Belgium, through neutral Holland, to England, and on to Ireland, without either passport or papers of any kind. It was a journey which could never have been made in the second world war, but in the first Belgium was never completely overrun, and Holland remained neutral all through the war years. And until 1914 the only country in Europe which demanded passports was the Russian Empire. At home in Queen Street long ago, he must have often seen cattle dealers in Smithfield and the local neighbourhood. But he never saw himself in that role before.

In Ireland he found a refuge for part of his community at Edermine, in Wexford. No one else in Maredsous could have brought it off. The Lord had put him in that place for that need. And then he made his way back to Maredsous still in the middle of wartime, in 1916. It must have taken tremendous courage, tremendous nerve. There was as much of James Bond in that journey as there was of St. Benedict.

When war ended he had five years of life left - to dress his communities psychological wounds and spread healing in his two nations. It was in these last years that his writings - the harvest of his spiritual husbandry over many years, made the graces he had received available to all the world.

What am I saying, about his vocation and our own, in all of this? I am convinced each one of us, thinking over it, can find parts of our own story in parts of his. I am convinced God leads each one of us, continually through life, to do the work God wants us to do, and in the place where he wants us to be.