Thursday, January 15, 2015 (Richard Meux Benson)

Thursday, January 15, 2015 

(Richard Meux Benson, Founder of SSJE, 1915)  

Romans 10.14–17

Sometimes there are those people who draw us into community in ways we never expect. They have a charisma, an outlook on life that can make us see life in a new and exciting way, which leads us into new places of challenge and deepening friendship. In our liturgical calendar we celebrate a man whose life was dedicated to drawing in others to the life of Christ in order to send them back out again into the world in service. Today is the centenary of Fr. Richard Meux Benson’s death which draws us into a deeper recollection of who we are as Christians because of his witness. 

Fr. Benson was born into a world of affluence but felt called into a life of dedicated prayer and service to a church which had not seen male monastic orders since the reformation. With two fellow priests he founded the society of St. John the Evangelist in Cowley England in 1865, slowly growing his influence to different provinces around the communion. Although he would not live to see it, the society grew to have houses in Canada, the Southern United States, Japan, and Cambridge. Cambridge remains the only house of the order still operating and is thriving at its present location just off Harvard yard. It is a unique experience to encounter an urban monastic house in the heart of a busy academic world. 

So why should we pay attention to the witness of Fr. Benson? Simply put because in our vocation as Christians we are called to live a counter-cultural existence that brings us into closer contact with Christ, and Fr. Benson’s example calls us to witness to that in our lives and ministry. In his example we are given an experience of how to encounter our own work in the world through because of his vision of the church in society. We are called to be redemptive beacons of hope in a world of phobias and fear. We are called to be people of community in a world of isolation and estrangement. Our lives are called to be the iconography of Christ in the midst of evil and hate, not because we are better than our neighbors, but because we are vulnerable enough to see our faults and know that even those ugly parts of us are redeemed through Christ. Fr. Benson remains for us a beacon into Christ so that through him in prayer we can become beacons in a world which is thirsty and desperate for authentic love. Fr. Benson may have founded a men’s order, but he calls us all to the same question in our lives; how will we be today in our world because of Christ? For us Fr. Benson points to the power of community, prayer, and service, as examples of how to achieve that in our day today. 

As you encounter the beauty and challenge of this day, why don’t you pray for someone you work with? Notice someone’s eyes when you talk to them, and silently give thanks? Invite someone to lunch you wouldn’t normally? Call someone you’ve lost touch with? Like Fr. Benson’s example, may it be Christ who speaks from the silence of our hearts today, so that those we encounter may know Christ not because we proclaim him with our lips, but because we love him with in the silence of our hearts. It is in the silence that community is built and Christ becomes manifest in our midst. 

- Alex Wilson

[ Alex Wilson, is the Co-head of the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College and a member of the fellowship of St. John the Evangelist, a lay community who fashion their lives on the rule of the society and make regular retreat at the monastery in Cambridge. More information on the society and its fellowship can be found at http://ssje.org/ ]