Above all, his spiritual life became more and more centered on Christ. In 1899, Dom Columba helped to found the Abbey of Mont César, Louvain, Belgium, and became its first Prior. He was invested with heavy responsibilities: Director of Studies for the young monks; Professor of Theology; spiritual director of Carmelite nuns, all in addition to being Prior. He gave retreats in Belgium and the United Kingdom. He also became confessor to the future Cardinal Mercier. Marmion's great gift for teaching came into full bloom during this period. His lectures were distinguished by, "on the one hand, his extreme clearness, and on the other his happy and fluent application of doctrine to the inner life." Rather than presenting "revealed truths like mere theorems of geometry having no bearing on the interior life," Marmion sought to inspire his students to "live in and by the mysteries he set forth to them." In 1893, Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, Second Abbot of Maredsous, was appointed by Pope Leo XIII as the first Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order. At the request of the Pope, Dom Hildebrand continued as Abbot of Maredsous, but relinquished that office in 1909. In that year, at the age of 51, "at the height of his powers, both physical and intellectual," Dom Marmion was elected Third Abbot of Maredsous. A community consisting of a hundred monks, it ran two schools and was a publisher, in particular of "La Revue bénédictine". Marmion adopted as his motto "Magis prodesse quam praesse," "To serve rather than be served," a maxim taken from the Rule of St. Benedict. The monastery had great spiritual and intellectual influence under his leadership. Vocations abounded. But Dom Marmion was not indifferent to temporal matters. Thus he had the Abbey equipped with electricity and central heating, facilities rarely to be found in monasteries at that time. In 1909, the government of Belgium asked Maredsous to consider founding a Benedictine monastery in Katanga, in the Belgian Congo. Doubtless Dom Marmion's missionary spirit would not have hesitated; but the Community preferred to devote itself to research and to promotion of sources of the faith, rather than to launch out into direct evangelization. However, Marmion lent effective aid to this mission, which was taken on by the Abbey of Saint André at Bruges.