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Since it is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8--a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics--we'll focus on Benson's comments about the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, in this segment.
In the first section of The Friendship of Christ, Benson focuses on the interior relationship; in the second, on the exterior, with the argument that we want to respond to Jesus's desire to be our friend in every way that He reaches out to us:
We pass now to consider another avenue along which Christ approaches us and seeks our friendship; another mode, and, indeed, other gifts which He conveys to us. It is not enough to know Christ in one manner only: we are bound, if we desire to know Him on His own terms and not on ours, to recognize Him under every form which He chooses to use. It is not enough to say, "Interiorly He is my Friend, therefore I need nothing else." It is not loyal friendship to repudiate, for example, the Church or the Sacraments as unnecessary, without first inquiring whether or no He has instituted these things as ways through which He designs to approach us.
So Benson goes on to review several of those forms "He chooses to use" starting with The Eucharist, The Church, and The Priest before commenting on "Christ in the Saint". In that chapter he begins with Mary, the Mother of God as he examines how Christ is present to us in "Personal Holiness or Moral Sanctity":
I. When we examine the Catholic religion as it actually surrounds us, we find that the Saints, and, above all, Mary, Queen of Saints, are vital and essential elements in the system. It is certainly true to say that no person born of human parents has exercised and exercises such an influence on the human race as Mary, the Mother of our Lord -- or (to put it yet more gently) that no influence is ascribed to any such person as is ascribed to Mary.As any student of art (East and West) and choral and classical music knows, Mary has inspired countless paintings, stained glass windows, icons, sculptures, hymns, chants, antiphons, poems, churches, cathedrals, etc., etc.:
It is impossible to grasp with the imagination what her Personality has meant to the human race -- as is illustrated by the countless services in her honour, the rosaries recited for her intercession and for her praise, the invocations of her name, -- in fact, the place she occupies as a whole in the human consciousness. Her name runs through Christian history as inextricably as the Holy Name of Jesus itself. There is not a circumstance in life, not a situation, not a crisis -- we might almost say, not a joy or sorrow -- in which, at one time or another, Mary has not been called to take a part.
. . . To the Catholic mind the thought of Mary is united with the thought of Jesus, as inextricably as the two natures in Christ; since, after all, one of those natures come from her.
In response to those who object that Catholics are "worshipping" Mary as we worship Jesus, Benson replies:
It is unnecessary to answer this at any length, since every Catholic knows perfectly well that all the worship and honour given to Mary are given with the sole object of uniting the worshipper with that "blessed fruit of her womb,"{1} whom she extends to us in every image, whether as the Child of Joy or as the Man of Sorrows. It is only those who are doubtful, or at least doctrinally vague, as to the absolute Deity of Christ, who can conceive it even as possible for an intelligent Christian to confound Christ with His Mother, or to imagine the Creator and the Creature as standing even in the remotest competition one with the other.
Then he demonstrates how Mary is always with Jesus at crucial moments, from His Incarnation in her womb to the Cross:
First, then, when we turn to the Gospel -- that ground-plan of God's designs for mankind -- we find that, according to scale, so to speak, Mary occupies a place of dignity beside Jesus wonderfully proportionate to her place in the more explicit Catholic system; since, whenever Her Son comes to a moment of human crisis, whenever a new or startling and fundamental fact is to be revealed concerning Him, Mary is at His side, and is presented, so to speak, in a significant attitude.
Benson makes the comparison between Eve in the Garden of Eden and Mary in Nazareth:
"The angel Gabriel was sent from God . . . to a virgin . . . and the virgin's name was Mary."{2} In such words the first actual step of the Incarnation itself is described, corresponding in an extraordinary manner to that first actual step in the process of the Fall. In both alike we see an Immaculate Maiden, a supernatural messenger, and a choice offered upon which the future shall depend. In the one case Eve's disobedience and love of self was preliminary to the sin by which the race fell; in the other, Mary's obedience and love of God was preliminary to the process by which the same race was redeemed.
Then Benson continues with more examples from the Gospels:
Again -- as Christ lies in Bethlehem, receiving for the first time as God-made-man the adoration of mankind, it is Mary who kneels beside Him; as Christ through thirty years "learns obedience"{3} as the Son of Man, it is from Mary that He takes His orders. As He steps out into the world to begin that transformation of things common into things divine, it is at Mary's prayer that, in token of His Mission, He turns the water into wine. As He closes His ministry by that yet more amazing miracle to which all other of His signs pointed forward -- His own Death upon Calvary -- "there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother"{4} -- as, centuries before, Eve, the mother of the fallen, had stood by that Tree of Death by which the First Adam died. Whether then, we turn to Tradition -- that imperishable memory and mind of the Church from which she brings out continually "things new and old"{5} -- or to the written record of that Life during which her whole treasure was committed to her care; in either case we find alike that Mary walks always with Jesus -- that when we see Him as a new-born Child, we can only find Him "with Mary His Mother";{6} when we adore Him as man, obedient as He would have us obedient, it is in Her house that He lives; when we creep to the Cross to wash ourselves in His Precious Blood, Mary is looking at us from His side. For history too, tells us the same, that where Mary is loved, Jesus is adored; where Mary, the Mother of His Humanity, is despised or slighted, the light of His Divinity goes out. . . .
Benson concludes this chapter--without using the words--reflecting on the Communion of Saints:
Here, then, Christ comes to us, extending Himself in that Court of His friends who stand about His Throne. Upon His Right Hand stands the Queen in "gilded clothing," herself a" King's daughter";{10} and on every side, in their orders, those who have learned to call Him Friend, conceived and born in sin, yet who "through many tribulations"{11} have first restored and then retained that image in which they were made, and have so identified themselves with Christ that it is possible to say of them that although they live, it is "now not (they); but Christ that liveth in them."{12}
To seek to separate Christ from His friends, to banish the Queen Mother from the steps of Her Son's throne, lest she should receive too much love or homage -- this is a strange way to seek the Friendship of Him who is their All!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
All Holy Men and Women, pray for us!
Image of the Holy Family, Stained Glass from Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Colwich, Kansas (C) Stephanie A. Mann 2016 and 2025
Image Credit (Public Domain): Immaculate Mary, Juan Sánchez Cotán (Compare to the cover image of the December issue of Magnificat by the same artist)
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