Richard Meux Benson and Charles Gore are remembered for their role in the revival of Anglican monasticism in the nineteenth century.

Richard Meux Benson was born in London in 1824. He was educated at home until he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under Edward Bouverie Pusey. He was subsequently ordained as a priest and served as vicar of the village of Cowley, not far from Oxford. In 1858, Fr. Benson conducted the first of many silent retreats for priests for which he later became well known. Also around this time, he established a church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist in Cowley, and made plans to travel to India to gather a community of missionaries to live with him in poverty. His bishop, however, urged him to stay in England, where the Oxford Movement was spreading.

At this time, although there were several Anglican monastic communities for women, there were not yet any communities for men. Therefore, in 1865, Fr. Benson and Fr. S.W. O’Neill established a community that was both contemplative and externally focused, which they called the Mission Priests of St. John the Evangelist. It was the first religious order of monks in the Church of England since the Reformation. Fr. Benson was named Superior, and as such, developed the Society’s Rule of Life and Constitution. The brothers recited the Daily Office together, were urged to spend at least an hour in contemplation each day, and continued their priestly ministry outside of the monastery. In the late 1800s, the Society spread to the United States, India, and South Africa. Fr. Benson himself visited the community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and remained there for a number of years before returning to England, where he died in 1915.

Charles Gore was born in 1853 in Wimbledon and was educated mainly at Oxford. He was ordained in 1876 and served in positions at Cuddesdon and Pusey House, Oxford, both of which were focused upon theological education and the formation of clergy. While at Pusey House, Gore founded the Community of the Resurrection, a community for men that sought to combine the rich traditions of the religious life with a lively concern for the demands of ministry in the modern world.

Gore, a prolific writer and noted theologian, was a principal progenitor of liberal Anglo-Catholicism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglicanism. He was concerned to make the critical scholarship of the age available to the church, particularly with respect to the Bible. A second but no less important concern was to prick the conscience of the church and plead for its engagement in the work of social justice for all. Between 1902 and 1919, Gore served successively as bishop of the dioceses of Worcester, Birmingham, and Oxford, seamlessly uniting his vocations of bishop, monastic, and theologian. He died in 1932.

Excerpted directly from “Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2022,” p. 40-41.

Lessons and Psalm 

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 27:5-11
John 17:6-11

Preface of a Saint (2)