Simone Weil

she formed the habit of reciting the poem “Love,” by George Herbert, whenever her headaches were particularly intense.

This confirmation of the universality of mystical experiences like hers, coupled with the Catholic Church’s exclusive claim to be the vehicle of God’s presence in the world, was the greatest impediment to her joining the church. It pained her that the church was catholic (universal) “by right but not in fact,” having condemned so much in the world and throughout history that was good.2

that her place was not inside the church, but “on the threshold … at the intersection of Christianity and everything that is not Christianity.”26

Another obstacle to becoming Christian, for Weil, was the church as a social structure.

Weil’s rejection of church membership on these grounds is in line with her lifelong dedication to purity of heart.

“The virtue of humility is incompatible with the sense of belonging to a social group chosen by God, whether a nation or a church.”28

“It is surprising,” she writes, “that God has given affliction the power to seize the very souls of the innocent and to take possession of them as their sovereign Lord.”29 Only the Passion of Christ, she believed, could overcome this contradiction.

The perfect love of Jesus on the cross reveals the presence of divine love in the midst of affliction.

If a soldier is willing to die in the service of the good, Weil asserted, he has the right to kill when war is necessary.

In New York, Weil had penned a prayer which some commentators refer to as “the terrible prayer.” She asks to be so identified with Christ’s suffering that what is left of her is an empty shell of a human being: “That I may be unable to will any bodily movement … like a total paralytic. That I may be incapable of receiving any sensation.… That I may be unable to make the slightest connection between two thoughts.”

By becoming totally emptied of self, through the acceptance of affliction, there would be, she thought, a pure exchange of love between God and the spirit of God within her.