MrsDarwin (of DarwinCatholic) and I will be hosting a read-along/blog-along of The Friendship of Christ by Robert Hugh Benson starting January 4. Follow along here and at DarwinCatholic; leave either of us a comment or send an email to be added to a Facebook group; write your own posts and be added to the roundup of links.
MrsDarwin introduces you here to Benson and his remarkably diverse body of work. It falls to me to introduce the particulars of the book we'll be reading.
So… what's inside this little edition (paperback here, Kindle exact match here, audio version here, optical scanned online for free here while you wait for delivery of your paperback)?
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I do not often judge books by their covers; but I often judge them by their tables of contents.
I am a sucker for the right level of detail. I love it when a book's table of contents usefully outlines the content entire, its part and chapter and section headings all Roman-numeraled in their ranks, sometimes in gloriously complete sentences. I know if I buy that book, I will have no trouble locating just the right passage I remember, even on picking it up years later. Other times, a concise table of contents draws me in with its spareness. A few words, if well-chosen, entice me to turn the page and find out more.
Always, though, the table of contents is a first glimpse at the mind behind the book: is it the sort of mind that I like to learn from? An organized mind; a mind that appreciates, and generates, structure; a mind that builds a clean, spare, frame, with all the parts hanging securely together in their proper order: here a wide great room, there a cozy nook. A work space. A space into which the reader is invited, in to sit, to study, to contemplate, to discover.
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When a friend recommended to me The Friendship of Christ by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, the table of contents drew me in right away. It is of the sparer type; but structured with a great deal of care for such a slim volume; and there are some intriguing hints at contradiction and contrast ahead. This might be a jewel-box, I thought.
And it is, in this new edition (paperback … Kindle), freshly typeset* by my friends Cat and Brendan Hodge at their new imprint, Oak & Linden Classics:
*N.B.: The "Look Inside" feature on Amazon will not necessarily show you the Oak & Linden edition; but the purchase links in this post are correct.
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I am a meddler, and an answerer of questions not asked. I also have, by now, read the book. And I might suggest a couple of improvements to the TOC. There's a risk in making it less spare, of course, and we can't ask Benson (1871-1914) anymore what he wished. Still. I'd make the structure a little more apparent. Setting aside Cat's foreword, I'll do so now:
1. The Friendship of Christ (General) functions as an introduction, overview, and motivation of the whole book, describing the attributes of human friendships, and using it to suggest a truly fresh and comprehensive approach to the "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." It belongs prior to Part I.
PART I: CHRIST IN THE INTERIOR SOUL: Considers that personal relationship as it manifests inwardly, as a sort of allegory of one-to-one human friendship, throughout initial and ongoing conversion.
- 2. The Friendship of Christ (Interior) is a story of conversion as befriending;
- 3. The Purgative Way, a way of looking at the gradual dying to self;
- 4. The Illuminative Way, a putting-on of the new self.
PART II: CHRIST IN THE EXTERIOR: Systematically works through encounters with our friend, Christ, outside our own self.
Chapters 5–11 contain surprises within themselves—but already we see hints of surprise in their very enumeration here: Christ in the Eucharist… in the Church… in the Priest… in the Saint… in the Sinner… in the Average Man… in the Sufferer.
To hear some folks tell it, having a "personal relationship with Christ" is set in opposition to meeting him in one or more of these listed contexts: for example, you can know Christ personally, or you can know the institutional church, but not both, at least not in the same time; the institutional church is frequently described as a hindrance to really knowing Christ.
To hear others: "Jesus as a friend whom I come to know and by whom I am known" ranks alongside these encounters, as one among them. But in Benson's scheme, the believer meets Him as a friend in every one of these encountering-places. Each context calls in its own way for particular actions by which Christ is not only recognized but befriended, and by which the mutual self-gift of a real friendship is lived out and reciprocated.
Benson's careful structure is itself a philosophy. Friendship is not one of the ways we encounter Christ: instead, it suffuses all the ways we encounter Christ.
PART III: CHRIST IN HIS HISTORICAL LIFE: Presents Christ acting as a friend through select moments of the Gospels' depiction of His life in history.
Perhaps you were wondering why the previous section contained no Christ in the Gospels. After all, Scripture is certainly a locus of Christ-encounter, a place we can return again and again to renew and develop the relationship, the friendship. And yet it is not enumerated with the "ways" in part I or the "indwellings" in part II.
Benson made a deliberate decision to draw this encounter-space of the Gospels out and to place it higher, on the level alongside "Christ within" and "Christ without." Is this encounter, then, neither—a third type? Is it, rather, both?
- 12. Christ our Friend Crucified is organized around the Seven Last Words. Each of these is a meditation, with length comparable to the other chapters, each considered as a word from a divine Friend, and (in my opinion) worthy of a TOC entry.
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- i. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"
- ii. "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise"
- iii. "Mother, behold thy Son; Son, behold thy Mother"
- iv. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
- v. "I thirst"
- vi. "It is finished"
- vii. "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit"
- 13. Christ our Friend Vindicated is a meditation on Easter Day through the lens of Christ's particular friend Mary Magdalene: Benson's Magdalene is at once a real person as well as a type whose virtues any of us may imitate.
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So, to make a long story short, I opened the jewel box, and found quite a remarkable little book (made even more jewel-like by its new typesetting courtesy of the Hodges).
I have always found the "relationship-with-Jesus" framing of the Christian life enigmatic, even troubling. Every good relationship in my life, each friendship, each love, is an individual and inexplicable wonder. I could not begin to explain how any of them ignited, or how it sustains itself.
This leaves me ever grateful; also, though, ever wary, that the miracle fuel on which each connection feeds will somehow run out and leave me bereft.
Benson's Friendship of Christ offers an angle that my own peculiar brain can wrap around. I came away from it no longer wondering how I can possibly learn to form a truly personal relationship with Christ; instead, with an understanding that I already have one. I thought I didn't, because I didn't have a thing that conformed to expectations. But it seems that the varieties of such relationships are as vast as the varieties of human beings, and that includes me in all my prickly awkwardness.
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Join me and MrsDarwin/Cat, and with us turn the page!
The roundup of links is located here.
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