There are several editions of this book available and because it's out of copyright, it's also readily available on line. I have an older Scepter edition.
The book is in three parts: I) Christ in the Interior Soul (including a general overview of "the Friendship of Christ and chapters on the Purgative and Illuminative Way); II) Christ in the Exterior (seven chapters) and III) Christ in His Historical Life (Good Friday meditations on the Seven Last Words and an Easter Sunday sermon on "Christ Our Friend Vindicated). In this Advent series, we'll start with the General overview on December 1 and discuss some highlights from section two, especially "Christ in the Saint" for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.
The book begins with a poem:
THIS IS MY FRIEND
From an old manuscript.
Let me tell you how I made His acquaintance.
I had heard much of Him, but took no heed.
He sent daily gifts and presents, but I never thanked Him.
He often seemed to want my friendship, but I remained cold.
I was homeless, and wretched, and starving and in peril every hour; and He offered me shelter and comfort and food and safety; but I was ungrateful still.
At last He crossed my path and with tears in His eyes He besought me saying, Come and abide with me.
Let me tell you how he treats me now.
He supplies all my wants.
He gives me more than I dare ask.
He anticipates my every need.
He begs me to ask for more.
He never reminds me of my past ingratitude.
He never rebukes me for my past follies.
Let me tell you further what I think of Him.
He is as good as He is great.
His love is as ardent as it is true.
He is as lavish of His promises as He is faithful in keeping them.
He is as jealous of my love as He is deserving of it.
I am in all things His debtor, but He bids me call Him Friend.
The last line seems the key to Benson's argument in the first chapter with the General overview of the Friendship of Christ, using Genesis 2:18 as the starting point "It is not good for man to be alone.":
Benson cites various examples from the Gospels to prove that Jesus wanted friends during His time with us: John 11:5; Mark 10:21; Matthew 26:41, 28:20, etc. These examples, Benson writes, demonstrate that this remains true now:
THE emotion of friendship is amongst the most mighty and the most mysterious of human instincts. Materialistic philosophers delight in tracing even the most exalted emotions -- art, religion, romance -- to purely carnal sources; to the instincts of the propagation or sustentation of physical life; and yet in this single experience at any rate -- when we class together, as we can, all those varied relationships between men and men, women and women, as well as between men and women, under the common title of friendship -- materialistic philosophy wholly breaks down. It is not a manifestation of sex, for David can cry to Jonathan "Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women"; it is not a sympathy arising from common interests, for the sage and the fool can form a friendship at least as strong as any between two sages or two fools; it is not a relationship based on the exchange of ideas, for the deepest friendships thrive better in silence than in speech. "No man is truly my friend," says Maeterlinck, "until we have each learned to be silent in one another's company."
Benson notes that friends can hurt us more than others because of the love and loyalty we share with them; when those friendships fail (and even when they succeed), however, that points to our one true Friend, Jesus Christ:
There is but one intelligible explanation then for the desires which it generates yet never fulfils; there is but one supreme friendship to which all human friendships point; one Ideal Friend in whom we find perfect and complete that for which we look in type and shadow in the faces of our human lovers.
Benson suggests that Catholics can rely too much on their own efforts in practicing their faith and miss this fulfillment of the friendship and companionship they crave:
They pray, they frequent the sacraments, they do their utmost to fulfil the Christian precepts; and, when all is done, they find themselves solitary. They adore Christ as God, they feed on Him in Communion, cleanse themselves in His precious Blood, look to the time when they shall see Him as their Judge; yet of that intimate knowledge of and companionship with Him in which the Divine Friendship consists, they have experienced little or nothing. They long, they say, for one who can stand by their side and upon their own level, who can not merely remove suffering, but can himself suffer with them, one to whom they can express in silence the thoughts which no speech can utter; and they seem not to understand that this is the very post which Jesus Christ Himself desires to win, that the supreme longing of His Sacred Heart is that He should be admitted, not merely to the throne of the heart or to the tribunal of conscience, but to that inner secret chamber of the soul where a man is most himself, and therefore most utterly alone.
James Tissot (1836-1902), “Jesus in Bethany”
"Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and Lazarus." (John 11:5)
If then there is anything clear in the Gospels it is this -- that Jesus Christ first and foremost desires our friendship. It is His reproach to the world, not that the Saviour came to the lost, and that the lost ran from Him to lose themselves more deeply, not that the Creator came to the Creature and that the Creature rejected Him; but that the Friend "came unto His own, and that His own received Him not." (John 1:11)
While we can use the model of human friendship to some extent, the Friendship of Christ is something much greater:
Now it must be remembered that while this friendship between Christ and the soul is, from one point of view, perfectly comparable to friendship between man and man, from another point of view it is incomparable. Certainly it is a friendship between His Soul and ours; but that Soul of His is united to Divinity. A single individualistic friendship with Him therefore does not exhaust His capacities. He is Man, but He is not merely A Man: He is The Son, rather than A Son of man. He is the Eternal Word by whom all things were made and are sustained. . . .
He approaches us therefore along countless avenues, although it is the same Figure that advances down each. It is not enough to know Him interiorly only: He must be known (if His relation with us is to be that which He desires) in all those activities and manifestations in which He displays Himself.
And Benson concludes this introduction:
Let us then consider the Friendship of Christ under some of these aspects. Truly we cannot live without Him, for He is the Life. It is impossible to come to the Father except by Him who is the Way. It is useless to toil in pursuit of truth, unless we first possess It. Even the most sacred experiences of life are barren unless His Friendship sanctifies them. The holiest love is obscure except it burns in His shadow. The purest affection -- that affection that unites my dearest friend to myself -- is a counterfeit and an usurper unless I love my friend in Christ -- unless He, the Ideal and Absolute Friend, is the personal bond that unites us.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, be to me a Jesus!
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