You might remember that Benson is also known as a historical novelist dramatizing the course of the English Reformation in several novels, including Come Rack! Come Rope! (set around the time of the Babington Plot); The King's Achievement (about the Dissolution of the Monasteries), and its sequel By What Authority, set during the reign of Elizabeth I. There's a scene in that novel describing the celebration of Mass in a recusant household by a priest who has been released from prison after being racked. Isabel, an Anglican, witnesses her first Mass in the Roman Rite:
Isabel had a missal, lent to her by Mistress Margaret; but she hardly looked at it; so intent was she on that crimson figure and his strange movements and his low broken voice. It was unlike anything that she had ever imagined worship to be. Public worship to her had meant hitherto one of two things—either sitting under a minister and having the word applied to her soul in the sacrament of the pulpit; or else the saying of prayers by the minister aloud and distinctly and with expression, so that the intellect could follow the words, and assent with a hearty Amen. The minister was a minister to man of the Word of God, an interpreter of His gospel to man.
But here was a worship unlike all this in almost every detail. The priest was addressing God, not man . . . Here, as these Catholics round Isabel at any rate understood it, and as she too began to perceive it too, though dimly and obscurely, was the sublime mystery of the Cross presented to God. As He looked down well pleased into the silence and darkness of Calvary, and saw there the act accomplished by which the world was redeemed, so here (this handful of disciples believed), He looked down into the silence and twilight of this little lobby, and saw that same mystery accomplished at the hands of one who in virtue of his participation in the priesthood of the Son of God was empowered to pronounce these heart-shaking words by which the Body that hung on Calvary, and the Blood that dripped from it there, were again spread before His eyes, under the forms of bread and wine. (Chapter XI. "A Station of the Cross")
I quote that passage to remind us that after Benson was received into the Catholic Church and ordained a Catholic priest, he celebrated--and his readers in the early 20th century were attending--Holy Mass according to the Missal of Pope St. Pius V, in Latin, ad orientem, with a silent Roman Canon. So that's in the background throughout this chapter. (That's what I meant when I commented ". . . I think a reader has to acknowledge and respond to the times and circumstances in which the author wrote; they had an influence on him or her just as much as our times have on writers today. It's just being fair.")
Benson is writing about the priesthood in a different time; when we in the USA read this chapter, for example, we might have the reality of the priest abuse scandal in our minds; Benson did not in his day. So when he comments: "Again and again, some unhappy priest, seeming to rise step by step in the spiritual life, extending his influence and his reputation, gathering admirers and dependents round him, suddenly offers to the world a heart-breaking reminder of his own weak humanity. It need not be a moral fall -- in the narrow sense -- thank God! it seldom is that -- but how often is there a sudden slackening of zeal, a sudden explosion of ludicrous personal pride . . ." and we might wince at his confidence!
Benson does not ignore the teaching/preaching efforts of priests, and you may read more about them in this chapter. What Benson emphasizes, as a Catholic priest himself, is how Christ is in the Priest in his sacramental offices; he refers to priests as "ambassadors of Christ" who:
. . . in virtue of the express commission which they have received, in such words as "This is My Body . . . do this for a commemoration of Me."{6} "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them"{7} -- are empowered to do that which no merely earthly ambassador can do. They effect that which they declare: they administer the mercy which they preach. . . .
Here, then, we can say in reality, that Christ is present in His Priest -- present, that is, as He is present in no saint, however holy, and in no angel, however near to the Face of God. It is the priest's supreme privilege, as well as his terrifying responsibility, to be, in those moments during which he exercises his ministry, in a sense Christ Himself. He says not, "May Christ absolve thee"; but "I absolve thee"; not, "This is the Body of Christ"; but, "This is My Body." It is not then merely the utterance of the lips which Christ employs, but Himself for the moment must sway the Will and Intention; since it is a Divine Act that is done. He becomes present in the priest, then, by His priest's permission. As to whether or not, here and now, the Blessed Sacrament is consecrated (that is, the crowning marvel of Christ's mercy consummated) -- as to whether, here and now, the sorrowful sinner goes pardoned away -- as to whether, in a word, God, in this or that place, at this or that time, acts as God -- this hangs not merely on the mechanical words uttered by the priest, but by the union of his free-will and free intention with that of his Creator.
It seems as if we had wandered far away from our theme -- Friendship with Christ. Yet we have never left it for a moment. We have considered various modes in which Christ's Friendship is made accessible to us; and have seen how it does not consist merely in an interior adherence to Him, but in an exterior recognition and an exterior welcome of Him. His Human Nature comes to us in the Sacrament of the Altar; His Divine authority comes in the Human Nature of those who compose His Church, and have a right to speak in His Name. These various characteristics of His cannot be apprehended -- that is to say, Friendship with Him cannot be what He means it to be -- without these further modes in which He accomplishes His Presence. And here, in His Priest, is yet another mode.
He dwells here on earth, speaking through the lips of His Priest, so far as that priest utters the authoritative and infallible teaching of the Mystical Body of which he is a mouthpiece. He energizes here on earth, in those Divine acts of the priest which Divine Power alone can accomplish, exercising the prerogative of mercy that belongs to God only, making Himself present in His Human Nature under the forms of the Sacrament which He Himself instituted. And, in addition to all this, He exhibits, in that atmosphere that has grown up about the Priesthood, through the instincts of the faithful rather than through the precise instructions of the Church, attributes of His own Divine character, in sympathy with which consists the friendship of those who love Him.
Nevertheless, Benson highlights a distinction the faithful should keep in mind:
Devotion to the priesthood, then, respect for the office, jealousy for its honour, insistence upon the high standard of those who fulfil it -- these are nothing else but manifestations of that Friendship of Christ of which we are treating, and recognitions of Himself in His minister and agent. Not to lean upon the priest -- (for no man is capable of bearing the full weight of another soul) -- but to lean indeed upon the priesthood -- this is reliance upon Christ: for as you approach the priest, understanding what it is for which you look, and discerning the man from his office, you approach that Eternal Priest who lives in him -- Him who is "a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech"; {9} Him of whom the highest praise which His prophet could utter, was to glorify Him as a "Priest upon His Throne." {10}
I read through a few of Pope Saint John Paul II's Holy Thursday Letters to priests from 1979 to 2005, in which he looked at the priesthood and the service of priests in the Church through the lens of the Second Vatican Council and other Church documents. John Paul repeats some of Benson's themes, especially in the Sacraments, but adds many more dimensions, particularly in spiritual direction, evangelization, aid to families, the Holy Spirit, Marian devotion, etc. But he and Benson certainly agree on the crucial role of the priest in our devotion to the Friendship of Christ.
Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us!
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