Preview: Undset and Robert Hugh Benson: "The Friendship of Christ"

To begin our discussion of the English Catholic influences on Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism on the Son Rise Morning Show, we thought it a good idea to start with a work we'd discussed in the Advent and Christmas seasons of 2025/2026 and during the Lent of 2026. We looked at Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ (at least the sections on "Christ in the Exterior" and "Christ in His Historical Life") quite extensively during those discussions.

So on Monday, September 21, we'll explore how Benson's spiritual advice to Catholics influenced Sigrid Undset to become a Catholic and why she'd want to translate The Friendship of Christ into Norwegian as Kristi Venskap in 1928, four years after her reception into the Catholic Church.

To understand why Undset was even looking at Catholic writers like Benson I think we need to look at her life during the late 1910s and early 1920's. She'd met and married a man already married with children and then found out that they had couldn't live together, that he was not reliable (!). She'd been raised to be artistic, observant, and critical and the man she married, Anders Castus Svasrstad, an artist, was "even more observant and critical" and she appreciated that, according to Tordis Orjasaeter (cited in Nichols, pp. 34-35). They were married in 1912 and he left for Paris in 1914. By 1915, she was reading Belloc, Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, and Monsignor Benson. Her relationship with her husband continued to deteriorate. 

What did she find in Benson's The Friendship of Christ? She clearly found something there that she could not find in Norway's Lutheran Church, her own creativity, or her criticism of contemporary feminism and other trends to help her deal with her married life.

In a chapter from The Friendship of Christ we have not looked at before extensively on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monsignor Benson describes friendship as a mystery--a fallible mystery, on the natural plane in contrast to Divine friendship:

Human friendships usually take their rise in some small external detail. We catch a phrase, we hear an inflection of a voice, we notice the look of the eyes, or a movement in walking; and the tiny experience seems to us like an initiation into a new world. We take the little event as a symbol of a universe that lies behind; we think we have detected a soul exactly suited to our own, a temperament which either from its resemblance to our own, or from a harmonious dissimilarity, is precisely fitted to be our companion. Then the process of friendship begins; we exhibit our own characteristics; we examine his: in point after point we find what we expected to find, and we verify our guesses; and he too, no less, follows the same method, until that point is reached (as it is reached in so many cases, though not, thank God! in all), either in a crisis, or after a trying period, when we discover either that we have been mistaken from the beginning, or that we have deceived the other, or that the process has run its course; the summer is come and gone, and that there are no more fruits to gather on either side.

Now the Divine Friendship -- the consciousness, that is to say, that Christ desires our love and intimacy, and offers His own in return -- usually begins in the same manner. It may be at the reception of some sacrament, such as we have received a thousand times before; or itmay be as we kneel before the Crib at Christmas, or follow our Lord along the Way of the Cross. We have done these things or performed those ceremonies dutifully and lovingly again and again; yet on this sudden day a new experience comes to us. We understand, for example, for the first time that the Holy Child is stretching His arms from the straw, not merely to embrace the world -- that would be little enough! -- but to embrace our own soul in particular. We understand as we watch Jesus, bloodstained and weary, rising from His third fall, that He is asking our own very self in particular to help Him with His burden. The glance of the Divine Eyes meets our own; there passes from Him to us an emotion or a message that we had never before associated with our own relations with Him. The tiny event has happened! He has knocked at our door, and we have opened; He has called and we have answered. Henceforth, we think, He is ours and we are His. Here, at last, we tell ourselves, is the Friend for whom we have been looking so long: here is the Soul that perfectly understands our own; the one Personality which we can safely allow to dominate our own. Jesus Christ has leapt forward two thousand years, and is standing by our side; He has come down from the painting on the wall; He has risen from the straw in the manger -- My Beloved is mine and I am His. . . . (Part I. Christ in the Interior Soul, Chapter II. The Friendship of Christ (Interior)

Perhaps Undset responded well to Benson's caution that some Catholics neglect their friendship with Christ, either relying on their own efforts to pray and adore, sacrifice, repent, and worship. He provides faithful Catholics, as we highlighted in our series earlier this liturgical year, insights into responding to Our Lord's desire to make sure that we're not alone (Genesis 1:8) and that He is our true friend--our one true friend.

Another chapter that might have appealed to Undset is the one about Christ in The Saint. As the creator (or sub-creator as Dorothy L. Sayers would put it) of characters like Kristen Lavransdatter and Erland, Jenny, Marta and Otto, etc., she'd see the creation and development of sanctity in a person as something great and artistic:

. . . He is in them as a flame is in a lantern; that their lives are not mere imitations or reflections of His, but actually manifestations of it. The graces that they display are actually the same graces as those with which this Sacred Humanity was saturated; their horror of sin is His; the powers which they exercise are His. They are "the light of the world,"{7} since there burns in them the Supreme Light of the world. Their "life is hid with Christ in God."{8} They have, by the help of grace, hewn at the stone of their human nature, by mortification, by effort, by prayer -- even by the final strokes of martyrdom itself -- until, little by little, or all at once by sudden heroism, there has emerged from the gross material, not the angel of Michael Angelo, not merely a copy of the Perfect Model; but, in a real sense, that actual Model Himself. It is He Who has lived in them, as really, though in another manner, as in the Sacrament of the Altar; it is He Who now appears in them in the culmination of their sanctity, visible to all who have eyes to see. Certainly it is not He Himself, pure and simple; since there still remains in every saint that film or glass of his own personal identity which God gave him and can never take away. For it is exactly for the sake of this personal identity, and for the service which it renders to the promulgation of Christ upon earth, that the saint has been created and sanctified.

Again I wonder how Undset would have reacted to the fact that Benson published this book after giving a series of sermons in Rome and Kensington because he was concerned that faithful practicing Catholics might not fully understand the friend they had in Jesus. While he made great and true statements about the fullness of the Catholic faith, Benson acknowledged that everyone in the Church might not have "that intimate knowledge of and companionship with Him in which the Divine Friendship consists". He wanted to make sure that they realized an assume fact: "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." Therefore she needed to know Christ in the Eucharist, in the Church, in the Priest, in the Saint, in the Sinner, in the Average Man, and in the Sufferer. For someone who wanted to give her all to her art, her family, and her country and who wanted to create characters and worlds as vividly and wholly as possible--as I think Father Nichols describes her in his book--I think that would have appealed to her.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Benson in 1907

Preview: "Christ Our Friend Vindicated" and Us

Last we ended our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show, Anna Mitchell and I commented:

After this imaginative narration of Saint Mary Magdalene's encounters with Our Friend Jesus, Benson applies these lessons to us--but that will have to wait for another discussion on Monday, April 20!

I don't think you'll be surprised at how Benson applies the lessons Saint Mary Magdalene learned to us, because they echo the examples he offered before: Our Friend Christ in the Eucharist, in the Church, in the priest, in Our Lady and the Saints, etc. In each lesson he outlines how Christ is Present to us after His Resurrection and Ascension:

First, then, He lives in the Sacrament of His Love -- as our Friend, our Sacrifice and our Food -- and all three for friendship's sake.

Then, in another mode He lives in His Church on earth; in such a sense that the soul that hears Her hears Him, and the soul that despises Her despises Him; since she is His Body of which He is the Soul; since she has "the Mind of Christ," speaks (as He did) as "one having authority," and does "greater works" than did He "because He is gone to His Father" and therefore can live in her. It is to the lips of her Head, then, that His Friends listen, for this human Head is He to whom the Good Shepherd committed the pastorate of His Flock, to whom the "Door" entrusted "the keys"; whom the "One Foundation" named "the Rock."

Then, in yet another mode He lives in His Saints and supremely in His Blessed Mother. It is to these chosen Friends of God that we go to learn what is Friendship; to His Mother that we go to learn about her Son; to the Queen of Heaven, to learn the dispositions of the King.

And he lives, too, in His own dear sinners; in those who from their darkness teach us what light must be in those who, Crying in the wilderness in sin, make us keen-sighted in our despair on their behalf to seek the Shepherd who comes to seek them.

His conclusion is that we will find Christ everywhere we look if we look for Him, even in our unfaithfulness, our troubles, and our joys:

So, little by little as we go through life, following with a hundred infidelities and a thousand blunders, with open defiances and secret sins, yet following, as Peter followed through the glare of the High Priest's fire to the gloom of penitence where Christ's Eyes could shine -- as we go, blinded by our own sorrow, to the ecstasy of His Joy, thinking to find Him dead, hoping to live on a memory, instead of confident that He is living and looking to the "to-day" in which He is even more than yesterday -- little by little we find that there is no garden where He does not walk, no doors that can shut Him out, no country road where our hearts cannot burn in His company.

And, as we find Him ever more and more without us, in the eyes of those we love, in the Voice that rebukes us, the spear that pierces us, the friends that betray us, and the grave that waits for us: as we find Him in His Sacraments, in His Saints -- in all those august things which He Himself designed as trysting-places with Himself; at once we find Him more and more within us, enwound in every fibre of our lives, fragrant in every dear association and memory, deep buried in the depths of that heart of ours that seems most wholly neglectful of Him.

So, then, He asserts His dominion from strength to strength; claiming one by one those powers that we had thought to be most our own. To our knowledge He is the Most Perfect; to our imagination He is. our dream; to our hopes their Reward.

Until at last, following His grace towards glory, we pass to be utterly His. No thought is ours unsanctioned by the Divine Wisdom; no love is ours save that of the Sacred Heart; no will save His. "To me . . . then, "to live is Christ; and to die is gain."{3} For "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me."{4}

My Friend is mine at last. And I am His. . . .

Christ is Risen: He is Risen Indeed!

Preview: Benson on "Our Friend Vindicated" and Saint Mary Magdalene

As we pick up our series on Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show during the Easter Season, we'll explore how Benson explores the Resurrection encounter of Saint Mary Magdalene and Our Savior, Our Friend Vindicated.

Benson begins with a brief consideration of what this vindication meant to Saint Mary Magdalene--whom he considers as being the woman who washed Christ's feet at the Pharisee's banquet in Luke 7:36-50 and the woman who stood at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady and Saint John--she is the special friend reunited with her Absolver, King, and Friend:

Our affair to-day is not with the putting of Christ's enemies under His feet, but with the restoring of Christ to His friends' arms; with the vindication of Christ as our Divine Friend in whom we trusted and have not been disappointed; not with His final forcible manifestation to the world. . . .

Let us watch that process, then, through the eyes of the humblest of His friends -- one who was far from possessing the serene clear-sightedness of Mary His mother, or the desperately quiet confidence of the disciple whom He loved -- but one who at least had to her credit, in spite of her sins against the Interior Voice and even against the decency of the world, that she "loved much," and "did what she could" -- two simple virtues to which even the lowest of His lovers can aspire.

So, first, Benson relates the story of the penitent public sinner, doing more than the host to welcome Jesus:

A silence falls as, unconscious of all except herself and Him, she droops her head so low that the tears drip on to His feet; and as, shocked at her own defilement of those sacred feet, she first wipes them frantically with her long hair, and then, as if to compensate for the touch of her tears, wrenches open the pot of perfume and dashes out the nard -- the world's whispering begins, up there in the places of honour.

Jesus lifts His Head; and then, in a sentence or two, all is done.

"Thou seest this woman . . . She at least has done what thou, my host, didst leave undone . . . She loved much. She loved much . . . And therefore her sins are forgiven. Go, my daughter, and my friend. Sin no more."

Then, Benson envisions her going to see Jesus on the way to Calvary and at the Cross:

Then she has followed Him again, through the streets, out through the gate, and up the little steep ascent. And, at last, when all is done, and He hangs there, stripped and shamed and tormented, and the soldiers have broken the line and fallen out into the crowd, she has pushed her way through, fought even to the foot of the quivering tree, and once more has "done what she could" . . . Once more she has washed those feet with her tears; and there, running down together on to the ground, there has flowed a sweeter stream than any that waters Paradise -- the tears of the pardoned sinner and the Blood of the Saviour. . . .

Surely at last that Power will vindicate itself, even at the eleventh hour; and the nails will burst into gems and the cross into flower, and He, her Friend, radiant again, will come down from His throne to receive a world's adoration! Is it possible that she herself, standing there, looking to Mary and John for encouragement, and then back again at Himself, whispered in her agony, "Since Thou art the Christ, save Thyself -- and me?"

. . . "And Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost. . . ."

At last, describes her encounter with the Angels and the Risen Christ, her Friend:

As she throws herself forward, speechless with love and desire, to grasp His Feet -- to assure herself even by touch that it is these same feet indeed which she kissed in the Pharisee's house, and on the Cross of Calvary -- that it is Himself, and no phantom -- He moves back from her.

"Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. Do not touch me." . . . That Friendship is not what it used to be: it is infinitely higher. It is not what it used to be, since the limitations of that Sacred Humanity are gone -- those limitations by which It was here and not there; by which It could suffer and grow weary and hunger and weep -- limitations that endeared It to Its lovers, since they could indeed minister to It, comfort It, and hold It up. And Its expansion in Glory is not yet consummated -- "I am not yet ascended to my Father" -- that expansion of the Ascension and the Nine Days' Journey through the Heavenly Hierarchy, from the position "a little lower than the angels" to the Session and Coronation at the right Hand of the Majesty on high -- that expansion of which the Descent of the Holy Ghost is the expression, and the Sacramental Presence of that same Humanity on a hundred altars the result.

After this imaginative narration of Saint Mary Magdalene's encounters with Our Friend Jesus, Benson applies these lessons to us--but that will have to wait for another discussion on Monday, April 20!

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us!

Christ Is Risen; He is Risen Indeed! West and East Rejoice!

Image Sources (Public Domain): Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (1835) by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov; Jules Joseph Lefebvre - El Dolor de María Magdalena; Giotto di Bondone - Scenes from the Life of Mary Magdalene - Noli me tangere

Preview: The Seventh Last Word: "Father, Into Your Hands . . ."

On the Monday of Holy Week, March 30, we'll consider Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seventh Last Word on the Cross, "Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit" (Luke 23:46) on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Monsignor Benson highlights the first rest the Incarnate Son of God had experienced, especially since He began the public ministry:

Our Lord has just cried aloud that Sixth Word in which He proclaimed that there was finished at last that "Father's business" of which He had first spoken in the Temple. Now He droops His Head again little by little upon His Breast, and in the words that he had learned at Mary's knee -- words in which every Jewish child committed the care of his soul into God's care through the coming night -- He commits His spirit into His Father's hands. For the evening is drawing on and the Sabbath is near in which once more, God, having seen all that He has done, pronounces it "Very good" and rests from His labours.

I. The thought of this Peace of Death into which our Divine Friend is passing is one of the most moving considerations of the Passion. He has been about His work for thirty-three years; and not for one instant, since He first drew mortal breath in the frosty stable of Bethlehem, has He ever yet truly rested. Even while He slept His Heart waked.

How many times do we read in the Gospels how Jesus responded to the needs of His people, even when trying to get some rest, some time to go away from the crowds with the disciples, or have some time for prayer?!

How utterly then has He earned His Rest! And at last He is to find it. The Soul through which such strong agonies have passed, is to sink into that peaceful place of refreshment and light where the souls that have served God according to their graces are awaiting that First Advent of their Redeemer. The Body that has borne so great a burden and heat of the day, that has been wearied with labours, and bowed down by sorrows -- and, at last, has been beaten, pierced and broken by the hands of those for whom such labours were borne -- this Body of His is to be laid in the cool rock-tomb, with wrappings of soft linen, soaked in spices and myrrh, to await once more the inbreathing of the Divine Energy which again shall pass through every vein, sinew and muscle, transforming each utterly back again to the unmarred Divine Image, in which, once again, now no longer subject to any law of limitation or weariness and waste, the Soul that can never sorrow again, shall eternally rejoice. Our Friend sleeps at last.

Monsignor Benson applies this sleep of peace to our mortality:

It is this for which we look at death -- the one hope that reassures and reconciles us to that violent cessation of activities which is to an energetic and vital soul the chief imaginative horror of death. It is even sometimes (so great is its attraction) -- we might almost say that it must be -- for every soul that is really taking part in the conflict of life, the chief attraction of death. For life must become from time to time an all but intolerable strain -- not only is there that weariness of body which arises from its incapacity to rise always to the demands of the soul; but there is that further weariness of soul arising from its effort to respond always as it ought, to the excitations and demands of grace. . . .

In the midst of our struggles, Benson urges us to find peace, "the Peace of God that passes all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) in the only place it can be found:

And it must come from one thing and one thing only, namely, a perfect balance in the environment for which our souls were made -- not as of a bird sleeping on the water, but of a bird poised in the air -- a perfect response, that is to say, on the part of our loving and lovable nature to the one adorable Nature which alone can support and can understand us -- in a word, that Peace can alone be found in that of which we have been treating throughout, in an intimate, intelligent, affectionate and voluntary Friendship with Christ, who made us for Himself, and designed His own Incarnation that the union might be complete.

That's why in the midst of our solemn celebrations of Holy Week, as we participate in those liturgies, we can't be morbid or bleak. 

Death is no longer frightful; and Life is no longer burdensome.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo's Pieta: The venerated image with its original canonical crown from 14 August 1637 by the Pontifical decree of Pope Urban VIII. Photo circa, 24 May 1888.

Preview: "I Thirst" and "It Is Finished" on the Son Rise Morning Show

In our last discussion on the Son Rise Morning Show, Matt Swaim quite rightly pointed out that the psalm Our Lord began on the Cross, Psalm 22, ends in hope:

31 And to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him.

32 There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made. (Psalm 21 in the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, however, does not go there immediately; he leaves Our Lord in the midst of that chosen desolation, until He endures another humiliation, which we'll discuss on Monday, March 23: 

As Benson puts it: 

Up to the present the deepest point of Christ's Humiliation has been His cry to His Father -- that call for help by the Sacred Humanity which by His own Will was left derelict -- His confession to the world that His Soul was in darkness. Now, however, He descends a still deeper step of humiliation, and calls for help, to man.

Christ asks man to help Him!

The fifth Last Word is "I thirst". (John 19:28) 

All through His life He had offered help: He had fed hungry souls and hungry bodies He had opened blind eyes and deaf ears; and lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees. He had stood in the Temple and called to all that thirsted to come and drink. Now, in return, He asks for drink, and accepts it. So David, too, in the stress of battle had cried, "Oh that some man would give me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem!"{1} For both David and David's Son were strong enough to condescend to weakness.

(ii) In the age-long Calvary of the world's history, Jesus cries on man to help Him; and the Giver of all humiliates Himself to ask.

In the context of Benson's meditation on the Friendship of Christ, he reminds that we are not equal partners in this relationship:

We have spoken of the Divine Friendship throughout as if it were a mutual relationship, as if we on one side, and Christ on the other, were united in a common bond. But, as a matter of fact, it is all on one side. We cannot even desire Christ without, except by the help of Christ within. The Christ within must cry "I thirst,"{2} before the Christ without can give us the Living Water.

This appeal, then, of Jesus must be our last and final motive, when all other impulses have failed. He is so beaten and rejected that He is come even to this. He must ask for mercy upon Himself, before He can have mercy on us. If we do not find our Heaven in Him, at least let Him find His Heaven in us. If we can no longer say, "My soul is athirst for the Living God," at least let us listen when the Living God cries, "My Soul is athirst for you." If we will not let Him minister to us, for very shame let us be content to minister to Him.

And then Benson references one of the Gospel stories we've heard this Lent: The Woman at the Well of Sychar:

He first uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary -- even the Samaritan woman, the alien from God's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink.

In Saint John's Gospel as soon as He has tasted the common wine on the sponge, Our Lord pronounces the Sixth Word: "It is finished." (John 19:30) Then He proclaims victory:

The evening light begins to glimmer again upon Calvary, the three crosses, and the little group that waits for the end; and as it falls upon the Face of Christ, the look of agony is gone. He has cried alike to God and man to have pity, upon tortured Soul and parched Body, and each has answered. Now in that Face, bleached by the darkness of the soul, and the Eyes, sunken with sorrow, a new look begins, that rises, as those who stand by watch Him, until the whole Face is radiant once again. The breaths come fuller and fuller, the Body nailed by its extremities begins to lift itself higher and higher till strength is regained sufficient for Him not to speak only, but to utter a cry so loud and triumphant as to startle and amaze the officer who has watched many men die, but never as This Man dies. The cry peals out, like the shout of a king in the moment of victory; and, in an instant, failure and labour and bitterness are behind Him for ever. Consummatum est. . . . "It is finished!"{1}

Benson explains the effects of this moment of victory for us:

Friendship between God and man is now made possible again, in the Body of Christ. That old irreconcilable enmity between the sin of the creature and the Justice of the Creator, between the defilement of the spirit and the Holiness of the Father of Spirits, is done away. We can be "accepted in the Beloved."

First, then: salvation is open to the sinner. No sin henceforth is unforgivable.

Even more:

Not only is mere friendship made possible by the death of Christ, but degrees of friendship to which even the angels cannot aspire. It is not only that a soul, through the Precious Blood, can pass from death to life, but that she can pass up through stages and heights and strata of that life, up to the perfection of sanctity itself. . . .

II. Christ's work, then, is "finished" on the Cross -- finished, that is, not as closed and concluded, but, as it were, liberated from the agonizing process which has brought it into being -- finished, as bread is finished from the mills and the fire, that it may be eaten; as wine is finished after the stress and trampling of the winepress -- finished, as a man's body is finished in the womb of his mother and brought forth with travail. . . .

Yet here is this vast river of grace pouring from Calvary, the river that ought to be making glad the City of God. Here is this enormous reservoir of grace, bubbling up in every sacrament, soaking the ground beneath our feet, freshening the air we breathe. And we still in our hateful false humility talk as if Perfection were a dream, and Sanctity the privilege of those who see God in glory.

In Christ's Name, let us begin. For Christ has finished.

As we enter into the Passiontide of Lent, when the glorious symbols of one aspect of that fulfillment--the sanctification of the human soul--and even the Crucifixes in our churches may be veiled, we remember both the Agony of the Passion and prepare for the celebration of its Victory. And on the Monday of Holy Week, we'll conclude this series with the Last Word 

Preview: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

As you might surmise, the next passage in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ our Friend Crucified, which we'll discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, March 16, begins dramatically, as Benson sets the scene:

The darkness of Calvary, spiritual as well as physical, draws on to its deepest. Christ has prayed for those who have outraged and repudiated His Friendship: He who was always the Friend of Sinners has added one more to the company [the Good Thief, Saint Dismas]: He who was always the Friend of Saints has united two of them yet more closely than ever by the wedding of Pain [His Mother and Saint John the Apostle].

Benson describes Jesus as drawing into Himself in this Word and choosing to experience this desolation:

Now He draws inwards from the world for which He has done so much: He directs this consciousness into His own Sacred Humanity; and in a Word at which heaven and earth tremble together, reveals to us that that Sacred Humanity, as a part of that process by which He chose to "taste death for all"{1} and to learn "obedience by the things which He suffered,"{2} has to experience the sorrow of dereliction. He who came to offer that Sacred Humanity as the bond of Friendship between God and man, wills that His own Friendship with God should be obscured. He becomes indeed the Friend of fallen man, for He chooses to identify Himself with the horror of that Fall. The Beatific Vision which was lost to man through that fall, and which Jesus Christ can never lose, is now obscured to the eyes of Him who comes to restore it through Redemption.

"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" is the only of the Seven Last Word reported in two Gospels, Mark (Mark 15:34) and Matthew (Matthew 27:46) and occurs at the "Ninth Hour". 

Benson admits that this Word is hard to understand and to apply to ourselves because we can and do distract ourselves from the deepest realities:

This Word is the one that, above all others, is most difficult of application to ourselves. For the state in which it was uttered is simply inconceivable to us who find our consolation in so much that is not God, and to whom sin means so little. If physical comforts are wanting to us, we find refuge in mental comfort; if mental comforts are wanting, we lean upon our friends. Or, more usually, when the higher pleasures are withdrawn, we find relief, with scarcely an effort, in lower. When religion fails us, we console ourselves with the arts; when love or ambition disappoint us, we plunge into physical pleasures; when the body refuses to respond, we take refuge in our indomitable pride; and when that in its turn crumbles to nothing, we look to suicide and hell as a more tolerable environment. There seems no depth to which we will not go, in our passionate determination to make ourselves tolerable to ourselves.

I agree that we (I) do often accept our faults pretty easily and can tolerate and excuse our weaknesses readily. Perhaps we're sometimes a little less tolerant of ourselves when we make a good examination of conscience before Confession, but: 

This Word, then, is meaningless to most of us; for to Jesus Christ, when the Beatific Vision was overlaid with sorrow, there was nothing in Heaven or upon earth. . . . "I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: for one that would comfort me, and I found none."{6} The tragedy goes on, up there in the darkness: we hear the groan; we catch glimpses of the tortured, colourless Face behind which the Soul itself hangs crucified; . . . we grope, we conjecture, we attempt to form lower images of the august reality; but that is all.

Without referring to the Dark Night of the Soul, Benson says we can and probably will experience this sorrowful loneliness:

(i) Occasionally even we ourselves rise to the point in the spiritual life where our Friendship with Christ is our chief joy, among all the other and lesser consolations that God gives. The fact that we know Him and can speak with Him is reckoned by us as sufficiently sweet as to make its apparent withdrawal the most acute of all our sorrows. (I need hardly say that this requires no particular proficiency in spiritual things. It is, in fact, impossible to be sincere and persevering in our religion, without sooner or later experiencing it.) Well, such a point is reached by us, let us say; and then, on a sudden, without our being conscious of anything more than our usual faithlessness and lethargy, this spiritual pleasure in religion is swiftly and completely withdrawn.

Then it all depends on what we do. Do we retreat into those other pleasures, as listed above? 

Suddenly care a lot about opera and ballet, maybe?

Instead, Benson advises:

How is our hold upon our Friend to be tightened unless now and again it seems as if He were slipping from our grasp? How is real faith to throw out its roots and clench its fibres into the Rock, unless the desolating wind of trouble at times threatens to uproot us altogether? For the keener the tribulation and the more bitter the dregs, the more honourable is the draught. To hold our lips to that Cup which our Saviour drained, even though its bitterness is diluted by His mercy -- the honour of this should surely be enough to make us hold our peace, for very shame.

Secondly, Benson reminds us:

Religion is not one of the departments which make up our life -- (that is Religiosity) -- but Religion is that which enters into every department, the fabric on which every device, whether of art or literature, or domestic interests, or recreation, or business, or human love, must be embroidered. Unless it is this, it is not Religion as it is intended to be. . . .

Now this, let us remind ourselves, is actually intended to be the life of every human soul; and, in proportion as we approximate to it, we are more or less fulfilling our destiny. For it is only to a soul that has reached this state that God can be All. He becomes "All" because nothing is any longer alien to Him. "Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." {7} The whole of life becomes illuminated with His Presence; everything is seen to subsist in Him: Nothing has any value except so far as it is in relations with Him. . . .

This, then, is the state for which a Christian soul is bound to strive and aspire. This and this only is the entirety of the Friendship of Christ; to a soul in this condition, and to her alone, can Jesus truly be said to be All. And this, further, is the only state in which real "Dereliction" is possible. . . .

As usual, there's too much here for the time we'll have on Monday morning, but with broadcast professionals and good friends like Anna and Matt, we'll do what we can!

We adore Thee, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Thy churches that are in the whole world, and we bless Thee; because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo: Crucifixion of Christ, 1540

Crucifix in St. Pierre des Chartres, copyright (2026) Stephanie A. Mann

Preview: Christ Our Friend's Last Word to His Mother and John the Beloved

Next in our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series, on Monday, March 9, Anna or Matt and I will discuss Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the next of the Seven Last Words of Christ: “Jesus, then, seeing his Mother and the disciple he loved, said to his Mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘This is your Mother.’ And from that moment the disciple took her with him.” (John: 19: 26-27)

Benson mentioned Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross in the meditation on Jesus's Last Word to the Good Thief and he continues that reflection:

Two of the personages standing beside the Cross are, for all Christians, for all time, the supreme types of Divine and human love. There is Mary, loved into immaculate being by the Eternal Father, the Mother Herself of Immaculate Love, and John the chosen disciple, allowed to rest his head, even before he had attained heaven, upon the breast of that same Immaculate Love. Surely these two, Mary and John, are already as wholly one as Love can make them. Those who love God so perfectly cannot love one another less perfectly.

Yet Jesus, in His seven words upon the Cross, devotes one to make them closer still.

Jesus, Our Friend, wants us to be friends with others too and with this Last Word He "unite[s] these friends in divine charity to one another" to demonstrate what He desires among His followers:

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{1} "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me."{2} The second commandment is like "unto the first": "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."{3}{4}

Benson's meditation on how we in society form these friendships to love our neighbor as ourself, forming communities of cooperation by submitting ourselves to the good of all, posits that this is usually in the pursuit of rejoicing and prosperity, alleviating poverty and sorrow. 

BUT:

. . . Jesus Christ does something that has never been done before. He uses suffering as the supreme bond of love. "Love one another," He cries from the Cross, "because you are strong enough to suffer together." "Mother," cries the dying Friend of us all, "behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

This word, then, is no less significant of an immense spiritual principle than are the rest. Mary and John have loved one another perfectly -- as perfectly, that is to say, as a common joy has made possible. Together they have watched His triumph: Mary has seen Him, the Child of Joy, upon her breast: John upon His breast has seen Him rejoice in spirit. But, from to-day onwards, their common love rises to yet greater heights: they love one another now, not merely in the Sacred Heart, but in the pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Hitherto they have been perfect friends; henceforth they are Blood-relations -- relations in a blood more intimate to them than their own -- a Blood shed for the remission of sins. It is not, "Friend, behold thy friend"; but, "Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

Benson meditates further on our friendship with the Mother of God, noting that it is through her Sorrows as much as it is through her Joys; that the Sorrows are really the stronger bonds:

First, then, this is the bond which unites Mary to ourselves -- not that she sang the Magnificat, but that the sword pierced her own heart also. Sorrow, wrongly received, is a mightier force than all ordinary human affections: sorrow, borne with resentment and bitterness, isolates the soul not only from God but from her own fellows. The wounded stag creeps away to die in loneliness. But, on the other hand, if sorrow is welcomed and taken in, if it is made, by the very effort which welcomes it, a bond of union with others that suffer, a link is forged which all the powers of hell cannot break. If Mary had been given us as our Mother in Bethlehem, if she had wrapped herself in her unique joy, if she had been to us but a figure of incarnate bliss; then when the horror of darkness fell upon us, we too should have crept away from even Her, to suffer in loneliness. A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. . . .

Indeed she is the Mother of the redeemed, because she was the Mother of Redemption: she stood by the Cross of Jesus, as she had knelt by His cradle; and she is our Mother, then, by that very blood by which both she and we are alike redeemed. The "Mother of Sorrows" must always be nearer to the human race than even the "Cause of our Joy."

Benson's spiritual advice is first, to make sure that our religious duties do not separate us from our friends:

It is an appalling fact that again and again those who claim to be enjoying the most intimate friendship with God are distinguished by selfishness and a lack of charity towards their neighbours -- that it is those, again and again, above all others who live what are called "misunderstood" lives, who actually advance their "Rule of Life" or the calls of their devotion as arguments against their having time or energy to be kind to their servants or acquaintances. "She is at her prayers, therefore she must not be disturbed. He is getting ready for the sacraments; therefore it is natural that he should be a little peevish and preoccupied.". . .

Then, he gives some practical direction:

Go home, then, and make up that foolish quarrel once and for all: go home and apologize simply and sincerely for your share in that trouble in which perhaps the other was even more to blame than yourself. It is intolerable that the friends of the Crucified -- that those even who aspire to be friends of the Crucified -- should think it conceivable to be at peace with God, who are not at peace with wife or husband or parents.

"Behold your Mother . . . your son!" That soul with whom you are at variance has a bond with you far greater than that of a common creation. The fact that the Eternal Word died for you both upon the Cross is an infinitely stronger link of union than the fact that the Eternal Word willed you both into being. For while the Fall broke the harmony of creation, the Redemption restored it; and this restoration is a far greater marvel than even Creation itself.

No man can be a Friend of Jesus Christ who is not a friend to his neighbour.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Saint John the Beloved Apostle, pray for us! 

Postscript: My best friend and I read an Easter book last year (The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith by Georges Chevrot) in which the author comments on Saint John's faith in the Resurrection at the empty tomb as an immediate result of this close relationship between Mary and John: "The crucified Lord had also asked Mary to look on John as her son and had entrusted his holy mother to him. Did Mary and John merely weep and pray together from Friday evening until Sunday morning, without exchanging any conversation?"

Chevrot doesn't think so and suggests that Mary had "been guiding the apostle's faith toward the reality what was to come . . ." reminding John "of the assurance of resurrection that her Son had given them . . . ("Peter and John at the Tomb" p. 30).

 

It is certainly the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead we share as we grieve for friends and family: I'll be attending the Funeral Mass for a good friend Monday morning, and heard this week of the death of a high school and classmate's mother. May Constance and Kay rest in the peace of Christ in hope of the Resurrection!

Image credit (both public domain): "What Jesus Saw from the Cross" by James Tissot and Crucifixion Brazil, 19th century

Preview: Christ's Second "Last Word", to Saint Dismas, the Good Thief

In case you are not reading Benson's The Friendship of Christ this Lent, here is some background on this chapter on "Christ Our Friend on the Cross" as we discuss the Second Last Word, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."{4} on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monday, March 2:

When Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes these meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, he does not separate them into sections or chapters. He writes a harmony of the Four Gospel accounts of these Words; his point of view is always Jesus Christ Our Friend on the Cross. He weaves his meditations of the Seven Ways into a tapestry depicting aspects of the spiritual life in the Friendship of Christ. He constructs a chronology and even narrates the passage of time: he imagines the dialogue of the two thieves and Jesus as occurring about an hour after the three crosses have been raised on Golgotha.

The first thief, the Bad thief, after an hour of agony, is "still absorbed in his own pain, regarding it, contrasting it, turning it this way and that, seeking to adjust it" so he can deal with it; the second thief, the Good Thief, traditionally called Saint Dismas, has become "aware that there is something in this universe besides his own pain."

The first demands, out of that obsession with his own pain, "If thou be Christ, save thyself, and us." Saint Dismas has, with "the mind of a savage child--has been painfully at work" trying to figure out Who is in the center of their agony. He heard that First Word, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" and is thinking about what it meant.

Benson explores the mystery of Grace at work in the Good Thief, "its mysterious operation" and notes that "we know almost nothing, after all our theology, of that divine process; we know a little of its conditions, a fraction of his effects; we have labelled a few by-laws of its working; but no more." Somehow, "there was still in him enough receptivity for Grace to enter."

Somehow, in the midst of his pain, Saint Dismas begins to think that Jesus is not a criminal at all--that His execution is unjust, unlike his own--that Jesus is King--that the "crown of thorns were not wholly a mockery, that the title above the cross was something besides a sneer", so he reprimands the first thief and asks Jesus for something more than relief from their present agony: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

Because of the simple humility of that request he receives a greater promised than expected: "This day thou wilt be with me in Paradise."

Benson's application of this drama to our spiritual life is that humility is the key. He warns against "self-assertion" in the spiritual life, trying to make individual progress there as we want to in our "worldly affairs", on our own terms, according to our own standards; to "force our friendship on Christ." So, Benson advises, the way to succeed in the spiritual life is to emulate Saint Dismas. 

He warns that the "soul", when thinking about any progress in the spiritual life, should remind herself that "not one of her good actions in the past that has been wholly good, for each that has not been done out of a merely natural generosity, has been done largely out of this very love of self; she learns that her "progress," for the most part, has been in the wrong direction altogether, that she has been accumulating merits that have scarcely a touch of meritoriousness, that she has been serving self throughout in those very actions which she had told herself were pleasing to God." 

[This unmeritorious merit seems like a corollary to the "unknowing knowing sin" of the First Word of Forgiveness.]

Therefore, we should ask Our Friend Jesus to "Remember me" and when You do "in that day be to me not a judge but a saviour!" 

Then Benson starts to turn our direction to the trio of those standing near Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, Saint John the Apostle, and notes that in a way the thief has joined that group. . .

Image Credit (Public Domain): Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th century

Image Credit (Public Domain): An icon showing Christ (center) bringing Dismas (left) into Paradise: At the right are the Gates of Paradise, guarded by a seraph (Solovetsky Monastery, 17th century).

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.

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.

Postponed from January to February: Benson on the Son Rise Morning Show

No, not that "Benson" of sitcom memory, but Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. Because of a "snow day" in Cincinnati (we had one too in Wichita), we had to postpone our discussion of "Christ in the Average Man" from his The Friendship of Christ. So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central on Monday, February 2. Please listen live here or later on the podcast here.

Here's my original post of excerpts from this chapter. 

As I mentioned before the wintery blast, we'll cover this chapter in two segments, concluding it on Monday, February 9! Then  on Monday, February 16, we'll finish off this section of the book, "Christ in the Exterior" with the last chapter, "Christ in the Sufferer".

That sets us up very well for a Lenten series on "Part III. Christ in His Historical Life, Chapter XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified" in which Benson explores the Friendship of Christ through the Seven Last Words on the Cross.

Don't you love it when a plan works out, even after a hiccup?

Preview: "Christ in the Average Man"--Part One--on the Son Rise Morning Show

UPDATED: On Monday, FEBRUARY 2 [because of a snow day in Cincinnati!], we'll look at the next chapter in The Friendship of Christ, "Christ in the Average Man" on the Son Rise Morning Show, at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or later on the podcast here.

Before I began reading this chapter from Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ, I searched on line for a definition of "the average man" and the results were focused on height and weight! Not very helpful! 

Instead I decided to focus on what Benson means by "the average man", because of course he is looking at how Jesus helps us understand and love the average man--our neighbor--because he (or she) represents Him in our daily lives:

WE have seen that it is comparatively easy to recognize Christ in the Priest and the Saint. In the Priest He sacrifices; in the Saint He is transfigured -- or, rather, transfigures humanity once more with His own glory. And the only difficulty in recognizing Christ in the Sinner is the same as that which makes it hard to see Him in the Crucifix -- a difficulty which, when once surmounted, becomes luminous with the light which it sheds upon the Divine Character. We have seen, too, that those who do not see Christ in these types of humanity lose incalculable opportunities of approaching Him and of apprehending the fullness and variety of that Friendship which He extends to us. But Christ has even more strange disguises than any of these; and that which is perhaps more strange than all is that which He indicates to us when He tells us that not merely this or that man in particular, but the "average man" -- our "neighbour" -- is His representative and Vicar on earth as fully (though in wholly another sense) as Priest or Pontiff.

And once I read the rest of the chapter I realized we could barely cover the highlights of the chapter in the time we have, so we'll have two segments for this chapter; that way we have a fighting chance! 

In part one, we have Benson's explication of the great Judgment parable in Matthew 25: 31-46, in which the Son of Man, coming in His Glory, judges and divides the Sheep from the Goats:

On the one hand, He tells us, stand the saved; and on the other the lost; and the only reason He actually assigns, in this particular discourse, for that eternal separation between the two companies, is that those in the first have ministered to Him in their neighbour; and those in the second failed so to minister. "As long as you did it, or did it not, to one of these my least brethren, you did it, or did it not, to me." These then enter into life; and those into death.

Immediately we are puzzled by the apparent ignorance -- it would seem genuine and sincere ignorance -- of both one class and the other as to the merit or demerit of their lives. Both alike deprecate the sentence of acquittal and condemnation respectively: "Lord, when did we see thee hungry, . . . or thirsty, . . . or naked . . . or sick or in prison?" . . . "We have never knowingly served Thee," say the one. "We have never knowingly neglected Thee," say the other. In answer our Lord repeats the fact that in serving or neglecting their neighbours, they have, respectively, served or neglected Himself. Yet He does not explain how actions done in ignorance can either merit or demerit in His sight.

Benson says it's not that hard to figure out:

It is that the ignorance is not complete. For it is an universal fact of experience that we all feel an instinctive drawing towards our neighbour which we cannot reject without a sense of moral guilt. It may be that owing to ignorance or willful rejection of light a man may fail to understand or believe the Fatherhood of God and the claims of Jesus Christ; it may even be that he sincerely believes himself justified intellectually in explicitly denying those truths; but no man ever yet has lived a wholly selfish life from the beginning, no man has ever yet deliberately refused to love his neighbour or to deny the Brotherhood of man, without a consciousness, at some period at least, that he is outraging his highest instincts.

He offers an explanation of the issue at hand, using another Gospel passage on the Two Greatest Commandments and then follows it up with an example:

It is actually the Voice of the Eternal Word, although His Name and His historical actions may be unknown, that pleads in the voice of conscience. In rejecting, therefore, the claims of his neighbour, a man is rejecting the claims of the Son of Man. . . . Pilate was not condemned for not knowing the articles of the Nicene Creed, and for not identifying the Prisoner brought before him: he was condemned because he rejected the claims of justice and of the right of an innocent man to be acquitted. He outraged Incarnate Truth because he outraged Justice.

No wonder as Francis Bacon famously wrote: "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." He had Truth standing in front of him; he knew how he should judge; but he "outraged Justice" by letting the mob pass the sentence. (James Tissot's "Ecce Homo")

Here then is an undeniable fact. The man who does not keep the Second Commandment cannot even implicitly be keeping the First: the man who rejects Christ in man cannot accept Christ in God. "He that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{3}

Benson concludes our part one discussion of this chapter with phrases from the Breastplate of Saint Patrick:

"Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me". . . (as well as in the heart of every man who never gives me a thought). "Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me."{5}

Then he offers some rather quaint examples, we might think:

The husband, for example, has to see Christ in the frivolous wife who spends half her fortune and all her energies in the emptiest social ambition. The wife has to see Christ in the husband who has no idea in the world beyond his business on weekdays and his recreation on Sunday. The middle-aged woman living at home has to find Christ in her garrulous parents and her domestic duties: and her parents have to find Christ in their unimaginative and unattractive daughter.

On Friday, February 6 and the following Monday February 9, we'll look at Benson's advice on how to practice this aspect of the Friendship of Christ in the Average Man, which is the way to holiness (to being sheep)--and he warns that there is no shortcut. 

Top illustration: Sixth century mosaic of the separation of the sheep from the goats. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.