Preview: Christ our Friend on the Cross: "Father, Forgive Them"

On Monday, February 23, we'll continue our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show with a Lenten series on his meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross: "XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified [The Seven Words]." 

After acknowledging various aspects of Christ Crucified, ("Priesthood is there, Royalty, the Prophetic Office, Sacrifice, Martyrdom")Benson states the focus of this chapter:

But, for the most part, we shall pass these by: we shall consider Him from that same standpoint as that from which we have considered Him throughout -- as our own familiar Friend who trusted us, and who was rewarded by us with the Crown of Thorns; who yet is content to bear all this and a thousand Passions more, if at the end He can but persuade us that He loves us. He spoke Seven Words as He hung there on Calvary, and each tells us of His Friendship.

The First Word:

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

Benson describes how this First Word might have been spoken:

Our Friend has climbed the Hill; He has been stripped of His clothes and laid upon the Cross that He has carried from the steps of the Praetorium. The executioners prepare and choose the nails. . . . Those whose love He is seeking stand round looking down upon His upturned face. He, lying there, sees them, and sees behind them all those whom they represent -- all those countless souls each one of whom He desires to win. And, as the hammer is lifted and falls, He utters His first Word.

His first comments on this statement highlight the wondrous charity of Jesus: in one sense, the injustice of this punishment was obvious: remember that in "Christ in the Average Man" Benson judged Pilate harshly not because Pilate did not recognize the Incarnate Son of God standing before him but because Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of the crimes He was accused of committing, and yet gave in to the mob. 

Many in the mob knew that He had healed the sick, gave the blind sight, and fed the multitudes. The only thing that He was guilty of was that "he was no friend of Caesar"--and Pilate did not want to be implicated in that crime! (If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend. For whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." John 19:12) 

In various ways, however, they really did not know what they were doing:

• They thought that they were taking His Life from Him; they did not understand that He was laying it down of Himself. They thought that they were ending for ever a career of mercy which displeased them; they did not know that they were co-operating in a supreme climax of mercy. They knew not what they did.
• They knew, then, that they were outraging a human friend, but not that they were slaying a Divine Friend. They knew that they were betraying a fellow-creature, that they were sinning against every code of human decency and gratitude and justice; they knew, like Pilate, that they were killing a just man, that they were taking upon their own heads the blood of an innocent person. 
• But they did not know that they were crucifying the Lord of Glory, that they were attempting to silence the Eternal Word.
• This, then, can at least be said in their favour -- "They know the horror, but not the full horror, of what they do. Therefore, Father, forgive them."

Next, Benson reflects on how Catholics in his day needed to forgive those states and organizations in Europe which had oppressed the Church in various ways:

They know that she has been the mother of ideals, of the noblest art and the purest beauty. They use to-day, in every country of Europe, for secular or semi-sacred purposes, buildings which she raised for her own worship of her God. They know that the morals of men find their only ultimate sanction in her teaching -- that where dogma goes down, crime goes up. And here, again, the only charge against her is that she is no friend to Caesar -- no friend, that is, to any system that seeks to organize society apart from God.

Benson names names that don't mean as much to us today. Nevertheless, any Catholic is hurt or even outraged today when she hears about a Catholic Church being desecrated, statues broken and toppled, or worst of all, the Tabernacle being broken into and the Blessed Sacrament scattered and stolen. 

Then he moves on to the deeper meditation for us, because "we too, in our our measure, have sinned in frantic ignorance":

We confess to a little sloth and lethargy, a little avarice, a little lack of generosity. We "know what we do," in part: we know we are not faithful to our highest inspirations, that we have not done all that we might, that we have shown a little self-will, a little malice, a little pardonable temper. And we confess these things, and give an easy absolution. And yet we know not what we do. We do not know how urgent is the need of God, how tremendous are the issues He has committed to our care, how enormous is the value of every soul -- of every act and word and thought that help to shape the destinies of such a soul.

Echoing the image of Christ lying on the ground, Benson warns of greater consequences of this unknowing knowing sin:

He lies here, and we gossip and stare, and go our ways where the tragedy is done, when He hangs between heaven and earth, descended from the one and rejected by the other -- our God whom we thought our slave, who desires to be our Friend.

Father, then, by this prayer of Thy crucified Son, forgive us also; for we know not what we do. . . .

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

Preview: "Christ in the Sufferer" on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, February 16, so close to the Ash Wednesday of 2026, we'll conclude our discussion of Part II, "Christ in the Exterior" in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ. The last chapter in this section is "Christ in the Sufferer".

Benson posts an excerpt from Colossians 1:24 at the beginning of the chapter: "I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ." The complete verse, from the Douay-Rheims translation, is "[I, Paul] Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church".

And the issue in this chapter, in a preview of C.S. Lewis' 1940 book title, as Benson says, is whether or not Friendship with Christ offers a key to understanding "the Problem of Pain" because

It is this problem that stands in the heart of every attempt to solve the riddle of the Universe -- the question as to why pain is, or seems to be, the inseparable accompaniment of life. A thousand attempts have been made to answer it. One answer is that of Monism -- that there is in existence no actual God at all of infinite Love and Power, and that pain is merely another name for the upward effort of the inchoate Divinity to realize Itself. Another answer is that of the Buddhist -- that pain is the inevitable consequence of personal sin, and that the sufferings of each individual are the punishment of his guilt in a previous life. It has been reserved for a sect of our own days to maintain that there is no problem, because there is no pain! -- that the whole thing is an illusion; that "thinking makes it so." But no attempt is made in this system to explain why thinking should take this unhappy form, nor why we should think so at all.

Here then the problem stands.

Monsignor Benson does not think this a solvable problem; it's not math or science, that you can add things up and prove something. That's because pain "is one of those vast fundamental facts that must be scrutinized by the whole of man -- his heart and his will and his experience -- as well as by his head; or not at all." We can't identify the effects of pain and suffering in every life the way we know that 2+2=4 every time we do the sum.

As a Christian would expect, Benson looks to the Cross:

And when we turn to Christ crucified, knowing who and what He is, we see the problem set before us in its most acute form. It is not a man who hangs there, however innocent; it is Man without his guilt. And it is not merely unfallen Man who hangs there, it is Incarnate God. Certainly this does not answer the problem as to how it can be just that one can suffer for the sins of another; but it does unmistakably shew to us that one can so suffer, conscious of the fact, and can acquiesce in it; and, further, that this Law of Atonement is of so vast and fundamental a sweep and effect that the Lawgiver Himself can submit to it. It gives us then, as Christians, exactly the reassurance that we need; since it is demonstrated to us that pain is not an unhappy accident of life, not a piece of heartless carelessness, not a labouring struggle upwards on the part of an embryo God; but a part of life so august and so far-reaching that, since the Creator Himself can submit to it, it must fall under that Divine standard of Justice into which our own ideas of justice must some day be expanded.

That gives Benson the key to seeing Christ in the Sufferer:

Accepting this, then, so far as a working hypothesis -- so far as to believe that the Atonement that Christ wrought is according to this incomprehensible law -- we turn again to those other innocent sufferers -- to the crippled child, the agonized mother, the darkened melancholiac soul.

Now if we isolate these sufferers from the rest of the human race, if we take them out of their context and regard them one by one, again we are baffled. But if, on the other hand, we do that which we have been doing throughout these considerations -- meditate, that is, upon how it may be possible to see Christ in them -- light begins to glimmer at once. . . .

Because we can see how the suffering can echo Saint Paul's words to the Colossians:

"I work out, that is," the sufferer may say, "under terms of my own humanity, that atonement which He offered in His own. I am the minister of Christ, as His priest in one manner, His Saint in another, and his whole Church in a third." 

Benson concludes with counsel on how we should respond to the sufferer:

And we, too, looking upon them and seeing in them not merely separate human souls that twist in agony, but souls in whom Christ is set forth evidently crucified, learn one more lesson of the Friendship of Christ -- the last, perhaps, to be learned of all -- that He who in His glorious and mystical Body demands our obedience . . . asks too, in those who are conformed to Him outwardly as well as inwardly -- who bear their pain solely because He bears it for them -- for that which is the most sweet of all the emotions that go to make up friendship, -- our tenderness and our compassion.

Even though Benson does apply this lesson of seeing Christ in the Sufferer in ourselves as he has in the chapters on Christ in the Sinner and Christ in the Average Man, it's clear that we should apply the lesson to ourselves as it helps us bear that pains that come throughout our lives. This seems like a perfect meditation on the Monday before Ash Wednesday as we consider how we should give the alms of Lent to those who suffer.

Book Review: Belloc on Oliver Cromwell

The picture posted above "Cromwell and dead Charles I", painted by Paul Delaroche in 1831, is in some way the opposite of Hilaire Belloc's study of Cromwell, published last year in a handsome hardcover edition by Mysterium Press in their series. Unlike Belloc, who wants to eschew myth and depict reality, Delaroche based this painting on François-René de Chateaubriand's fictional account of Cromwell opening Charles I's coffin. (It doesn't seem like Charles has been decollated at all from the angle Delaroche chose! Is there some blood pooled under the king's beard or is that just a shadow? Lack of a model, I suppose.) Belloc does reference this painting at the end of Chapter 12, "Killing the King":

There is a story the witness to which may be believed or unbelieved; it is of so dramatic a sort that many doubt it; but there is nothing impossible in it. It runs thus:

In the room where the King's body was lying at evening a figure entered which the watcher recognized as Cromwell's. He who so came in lifted the veil and looked upon the face, which was quiet even after such a death, and was heard to mutter, "Cruel necessity." (p, 216)

I commented on Belloc's style in my review of Belloc's Charles I. Here are a few examples of how that style creates confidence in the reader, from the first chapter of Cromwell, "Myth and Reality":

This book is not another life of Oliver Cromwell; there are dozens too many, the earlier batch a mass of slander, the later a mass of panegyric--all of them myth. My object here is to seek reality; to discover what Cromwell was within the nature of the man's motives, the quality of his actions as witnesses to the moral truth about himself. (p. 1)

[Ignoring the two myths, one condemning, the other praising] Belloc states: ". . . it is the business of historical judgment to establish truth on this character. No other object has been pursued in these pages." (p. 7)

And addressing the reader, Belloc emphasizes that we need to know Cromwell's background, his social standing, his great wealth, his attraction to the "intense new religion" [Puritan Calvinism]:

To discover his circumstances, you must, again, envisage those things in the world around him which made him act in a manner natural to him, strange to us: for instance, the presence of what I have called "The Catholic Menace" to him in 1620-50 most vividly apparent, to us in 1930-40 incomprehensible." (p. 8)

With that kind of address to the reader, and that kind of clarity of purpose, Belloc makes a case for trusting his portrait of Cromwell. He would have to be an utter cad if he was/is lying to his reader. He also makes it clear that he is more interested in Cromwell's political actions in bringing about Charles I's death than he is in Cromwell's military and strategic prowess, which he readily acknowledges. Not that he's going to ignore it, but it's not his main interest. He acknowledges it; he offers details in chapter 10, and narrates actions in other chapters.

The Table of Contents:

1. The Myth and Reality
2. The Problem
3. The New Millionaires
4. The New Religion
5. Growth of Character
6. The Catholic Menace
7. The Soldier Out of Place
8. The Nature of the Civil War

9. Forming and Informing

10. The Typical Actions
I. Winceby
II. Marston Moor
III. The Second Battle of Newbury
IV. Naseby
11. The Siege Train and Basing House
12. The Killing of the King
13. Ireland
I. The Approach
II. Drogheda 

III. Wexford
IV. Waterford
V. Kilkenny
VI. Clonmel
14. The Scotch Campaigns
I. Preston
II. Dunbar
III. Worcester
15. Reluctant Power
16. Cromwell in the Presence of Death

The first nine chapters are Belloc's setting of the scene of Cromwell's actions before, during, and after the English Civil War and through his reign as Protector. He describes Cromwell's family background, how the Williams-Cromwell family came to wealth through their connection with Thomas Cromwell and acquisition of land through the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Chapters 4 and 6 analyze the religious/social background of Calvinism and Catholicism, framing Belloc's scrupulously fair and balanced analysis of Cromwell's character. 

It's in Chapter 13 on Cromwell's actions in the sieges of the five Irish cities that Belloc concludes that Cromwell acted cruelly, unjustly, and horribly against especially the civilian population but also the military in those cities when they had been granted quarter. He charges Cromwell with "the profound wounding, mutilation and attempted murder of a nation." (p. 217)

Regarding these sieges, Belloc notes that in "the excesses of cruelty" displayed Cromwell was able to give "free rein to his religion" in a "crusading action" against Catholicism and Catholics. Cromwell accepted and even rejoiced in his responsibility in this action because he saw it as God's will. Belloc judges, however, that he was violating agreed-upon truces, surrender, quarter, and amnesties because of his hatred for Catholics. (pp. 224-225) For example, when the people of Wexford required the continued practice of their Catholic faith and the protection of Catholic churches and monasteries as part of their surrender, these terms "moved Cromwell to violence." 

In the last two chapters, Belloc describes Cromwell's reluctant personal rule and death. Cromwell finds himself facing the same difficulties Charles I had--how to finance the government when the people were tired of years of taxation (the taxation Parliament had fought Charles I about), especially when England was fighting a trade and naval war against the Dutch. Cromwell didn't want this absolute authority but was never able to share it with a reasonable Parliament. The responsibility for the debt England was incurring was all his. It was a "grinding menace" and "the burden grew heavier with every week that passed." (p. 315)

Belloc sympathizes with Cromwell's aches and pains at the end of his life after so much wear and tear on his body in the campaigns of the Civil War. Cromwell suffered from insomnia and was exhausted. Then his "beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypool must die" and Cromwell "would not leave her" bedside as she was suffering, only adding to his exhaustion. (p. 319) As Belloc had suffered the devastating losses of his wife Elohe in 1914 and his son Louis in 1918 when serving the Royal Flying Corps in France.

I appreciate Belloc's fairness and his standards of judging Cromwell's character, as he has done in other books about Wolsey, Cranmer, and Charles I. I look forward to the books about Charles II and James II. He is careful, discreet, and as fair as possible, acknowledging the possibility of bias.

Please note that the publisher sent me a review copy in exchange for my opinion about the book. Mysterium Press books are available for sale in the USA at Os Justi Press in their "Belloc Books" collection.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Charles I, with Cromwell standing over his dead body.

Delaroche is famous for these genre historical paintings, like this one of Lady Jane Grey or of Saint Joan of Arc questioned by the Cardinal of Winchester.

Preview: Monsignor Benson on How to See and Love "Christ in the Average Man"

On Monday, February 9, we'll conclude our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on how to see and love "Christ in the Average Man" from The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show. Of course, I'll be on at my usual time, a little after 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

At the end of this chapter he warns there is no shortcut to following this path to holiness and then advises, relating this aspect of seeking the Friendship of Christ to those he's discussed before: 

. . . To find Him here is to find Him everywhere. If we find Him here, how much more easily shall we find Him in the Saint, the Sinner, the Priest, the Church and the Blessed Sacrament. . . .

Then he emphasizes that we have to be intentional in following this path:

(1) We have to remind ourselves constantly of the duty, and to remain discontented with ourselves until we are at least attempting to practise it.

And he offers a warning:

. . . Christ caresses the soul, entices it and enchants it, especially in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, in order to encourage it to further efforts; and it is, therefore, a very real spiritual snare that we should mistake Christ's gifts for Christ, religiosity for religion, and the joys possible on earth for the joys awaiting us in heaven -- in a word, that we should mistake the saying of "Lord! Lord!" for the "doing the Will of the Father who is in heaven."{6} . . .

And a way to test ourselves:

Continually and persistently, therefore, we have to test our progress by practical results. I find it easier and easier to worship Christ in the Tabernacle: do I therefore find it easier and easier to serve Christ in my neighbour? For, if not, I am making no real progress at all. I am not advancing, that is to say, along the whole line: I am pushing forward one department of my life to the expense of the rest: I am not developing my Friendship with Christ: I am developing, rather, my own conception of His Friendship (which is a totally different thing). I am falling into the most fatal of all interior snares. "I find Him in the shining of the stars. I find Him in the flowering of the fields. But in His ways with man I find Him not."{7} And therefore I am not finding him as He desires to be found.

Then, echoing his comment in the chapter on "Christ in the Sinner" ("Lastly, it is necessary to remember that if we are to have pity on Christ in the Sinner, we must therefore have pity on Christ in ourself. . . ") we have to remember that each of us is an "Average Man":

(2) A second aid to this recognition of Christ lies in an increase of self-knowledge. My supreme difficulty is the merely superficial and imaginative difficulty of realizing how it is possible to discern the Unique beneath the disguise of the Average. Therefore, as I learn to know myself better, and learn therefore how very average I myself am, and, at the same time, discover that Christ still bears with me, tolerates me and dwells within me, it becomes easier for me to realize that Christ is also in my neighbour. As I penetrate deeper and deeper by self-knowledge into the strata of my own character, learning afresh with each discovery how self-love permeates the whole, how little zeal there is for God's glory, and what an immensity of zeal for my own, how my best actions are poisoned by the worst motives -- and yet, all through, that Christ still condescends to tabernacle beneath it all and to shine in a heart so cloudy as mine -- it becomes increasingly easy for me to understand that He can with even greater facility lie hid beneath that exterior of my neighbour whom I find so antipathetic, but of whose unworthiness I can never be so certain as I am of my own.

His final word of advice: "And then, having found Christ in yourself, go out and find Him in your neighbour too."

Earlier this week I attended a "Lent 101" class offered by our Pastor at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Wichita, in which he emphasized the importance of Fasting during Lent. We have to fast and abstain, he said; that practice is the sine qua non of a good Lent. In covering the other two practices of Lent, prayer and almsgiving, he highlighted spiritual reading and the practice of the Works of Mercy. He further encouraged not only the Corporal Works of Mercy but also the Spiritual Works of Mercy. Obviously, those works of mercy are mostly for the good of our neighbor, the Average Man.

Image Credits (Public Domain): The Good Samaritan, after Delacroix by Van Gogh, 1890 at the top; and [before Van Gogh] Delacroix's Good Samaritan from 1849.

Another Optional Memorial for October 9: Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church

I really couldn't wait to express my delight at this news from the Vatican's Liturgical Office that Saint John Henry Newman's feast day on October 9 is to be added to the General Roman Calendar. It has been on the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church in England with these texts under the Commons of Pastors: Pastors in the Liturgy of the Hours Office of Readings. But now, since he's been named a Doctor of the Church, that will change according to this Vatican document, and there's a different second reading from the current English liturgical prayers.

The English are currently reading a selection from Sermon 15. "Sins of Infirmity" from Volume 5 of the Parochial and Plain Sermons. The decree from the Vatican has a selection from Chapter Five "Position of My Mind Since 1845", pp. 238-239 and 250-251 of the Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865).

Here is the English translation of the decree:

The kindly light of God’s grace, which came into this world to enlighten the gentiles (cf. Lk 2: 32), led John Henry Newman to find peace in the Catholic Church and gave him such strength that he was able to say “God has created me to do Him some definite service … I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught”. Throughout his long life Cardinal Newman was unstinting in this service to which he had been called. The service of intellectual enquiry; the service of preaching and teaching; as well as service to the poor and the least.

His lively mind has left us enduring monuments of great importance in the fields of theology and ecclesiology, as well as poetic and devotional compositions. His constant search to be led out of shadows and images into the fullness of the truth has become an example for every disciple of the Risen One. Thus, in a special way, Saint John Henry, having been recognized as a radiant light for the Church on pilgrimage through history, may rightly be numbered among the other saintly Doctors inscribed in the General Roman Calendar.

For this reason, considering the recent declaration of the title of Doctor of the Church which has been conferred upon a saintly pastor of such outstanding significance for the entire community of the faithful, the Supreme Pontiff Pope LEO XIV has decreed that Saint John Henry Newman, Priest and Doctor of the Church, be inscribed in the General Roman Calendar, and that his Optional Memorial be celebrated by all on 9 October.

There is a comment: "Anything to the contrary notwithstanding." What does that contract clause mean for the Dioceses of England and Wales which currently celebrate his feast as a Feast? I don't see any update on their liturgical website, but they are in the transition between Archbishops of Westminster. Note that Pope Leo XIV made this decision in November last year. 

Note also that Saint John Leonardi and Saint Denis of Paris and Companions also have Optional Memorials on October 9.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Report and Review: Piano "Salons" at Friends University

On Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31, my sister and I attended two well-designed and performed piano recitals at Friends University: "Music of the Night" on Friday and "Songs without Words" on Saturday. 

The first featured Dr. Nathanael May, Fine Arts Division Chair and Professor of Music and three local, young pianists (two 8th graders and one high school sophomore). The younger soloists performed three of the better known Nocturnes by Chopin (No. 2 from Opus 9, No. 20 in C# minor and No. 21, in C minor, both published posthumously). Dr. May asked their piano teachers to stand and be recognized as did Dr. Knight on Saturday!

Dr. May offered biographical details on the composers whose works he performed, provided background on their composition, and gave some hints for our listening appreciation: Anis Fuleihan from Cyprus (Twilight Mood from 1940); Petite Serenade, Op. 41 by Eduard Schutt; Le Chreche by Idisor Philipp; one of the Kinderszenen of Robert Schumann, (Kind im Einschlummern); a Nocturne by Valeri Zhelobinsky, and several others: Debussy, Scriabin, Borodin, Respighi, and Jeff Manookian, all compositions related to the night. On a dark, cold winter night, the setting in the spare Quaker Chapel in the Riney Fine Arts Center was so appropriate. Dr. May wished that the fire place would have been working to add to the salon ambiance.

One of the composers I wanted to research after the concert was Jeff Manookian (1953-2021). He was represented by four of his 1993 Nocturnes. When Dr. May introduced them he mentioned that one would think the composer should be famous, given his resume. Here's an obituary. Albany Records has recorded some of his works.

Then on Saturday night, at an earlier hour, we attended Dr. James Knight's piano recital with operatic and other vocal works--including a Sonata-form medley of songs by The Beatles--but no Mendelssohn (by either Felix or Fanny!). Three of the works Dr. Knight performed, based on Puccini's La Boheme, Strauss's Salome, and A Beatles Sonata, were all his arrangements, and they were marvelous.

His Fantasy on Themes of La Boheme had me in the opera house as Rodolfo, Mimi, and Musetta were singing--and I cried as if Mimi had died in the garret. He also played an arrangement of the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice by Giovanni Sgambati (I really wanted to hear "Che farò senza Euridice?", but Sgambati didn't include that).

When Dr. Knight introduced A Beatles Sonata, he commented that he was using Frederic Chopin's Sonata form when he composed the three movements, Allegro, Andante, and Rondo with famous tunes by the Beatles (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey). I'd like to find out more about what differentiates Chopin's Sonata form, but what I've found on-line is too complicated for me.

As on Friday night, three students performed: two with a Russian Theme for Four Hands by Sergei Rachmaninoff (Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 11, No. 3) and the third with "Song of Storms" by Koji Kondo, which is "from the video game series The Legend of Zelda"!

One of the students performing the Rachmaninoff is from my parish, Blessed Sacrament!

Over the years, I've enjoyed these great programs at Friends University: their Faculty Fanfare concerts, operas, Tower Wind Quintet concerts, jazz ensembles, etc. They've been enlightening and entertaining, and I anticipate the annual announcement of the schedule!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Photograph of Chopin from 1849.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Poster for the 1896 production for Puccini's La Boheme.