Religion: Was She a Saint?

Was She a Saint? It may be a long time before the Christian world knows what to make of the Frenchwoman named Simone Weil. She was born (in 1909) into an agnostic Jewish family, and died (in 1943) a passionate Christian mystic (TIME, Jan. 15). She was deeply influenced by Roman Catholicism, but could never bring herself to become a Catholic, or even to be baptized. She wrote hardly a line for publication, but her diaries, letters and a few essays contain a vivid and challenging sense of the presence of God.

Was Simone Weil perhaps a saint? She practiced the kind of self-denial that the world has often recognized as saintly. A wartime refugee in Britain, she virtually starved herself to death at 34 because, though exhausted from overwork, she would not eat more than the ration in occupied France. But what are Christians to make of Simone Weil’s attitude toward the church? The Dominican priest who was her spiritual adviser is sure that, had she lived, she would have accepted baptism. Simone Weil doubted it. A brilliant intellectual who found God after wading through agnosticism and Marxism, she thought her mission was to remain “on the threshold” of the church, a bridge between believers and unbelievers.

In Waiting for God (Putnam; $3.50), her spiritual autobiography is published in English for the first time. Excerpts: ¶ “The function of the church as the collective keeper of dogma is indispensable . .. But she is guilty of an abuse of power when she claims to force love and intelligence to model their language upon her own. This abuse of power is not of God. It comes from the natural tendency of every form of collectivism, without exception, to abuse power.” ¶ “It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God’s mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of its inconsolable bitterness. If, still persevering in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry ‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’, if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is the central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God . . .

”When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: ‘It is the trade entering his body.’ Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order, and beauty of the world and the obedience of creation to God that are entering our body. After that how can we fail to bless … the Love that sends us this gift?” ¶”Of all the beings other than Christ of whom the Gospel tells us, the good thief is the one I most envy. To have been at the side of Christ and in the same state during the crucifixion seems to me a far more enviable privilege than to be at the right hand of his glory.” ¶ “Matter is entirely passive and … entirely obedient to God’s will. It is a perfect model for us … What is more beautiful than the action of gravity on the fugitive folds of the sea waves, or on the almost eternal folds of the mountains?

“The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it. On the contrary, this adds to its beauty. If it altered the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would [not be] perfectly obedient to every external pressure. It is this perfect obedience that constitutes the sea’s beauty.”

¶”Men can never escape from obedience to God. A creature cannot but obey. The only choice given to men, as intelligent and free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it.”

¶ “God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself and the means to love . . . The implicit love of God can have only three immediate objects . . . religious ceremonies, the beauty of the world, and our neighbor.”

¶”In general, making suitable reservations for the treasures that are unknown, little known, or perhaps buried among the forgotten remains of the Middle Ages, we might say that the beauty of the world is almost absent from the Christian tradition. This is strange. It is difficult to understand. It leaves a terrible gap. How can Christianity call itself catholic if the universe itself is left out?” ¶ “He who knows the secrets of all hearts alone knows the secret of the different forms of faith. He has never revealed this secret, whatever anyone may say.”

¶”The great error of the Marxists and of all the 19th Century was to believe that by walking straight ahead one had mounted into the air … We cannot take a single step towards heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction.” ¶ “The right use of the will is a condition of salvation, necessary no doubt but remote, inferior, very subordinate and very negative. The weeds are pulled up by the muscular effort of the peasant, but only sun and water can make the corn grow. The will cannot produce any good in the soul.. .

“To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save us.”