Mystic Monday: Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
If part of Christian Mysticism is about disruption of the routine and common, in keeping with what Jesus did through teaching, miracle, and witness, then there may be no figure more disruptive than Simone Weil, a French philosopher and mystic who has been among the most quoted and referenced of the last century.
Her status as a Christian mystic is particularly notable when one considers that Weil was a Jew.
She was never baptized as a Christian, did not seek it, nor ever received the sacrament, so her disruptive perspective has a certain splendor to it. She did, however, respond to the power of the sacrament and the healing power of grace.
Although she was born into a comfortable Jewish family, Weil came to find beauty and meaning in the Christian liturgy, especially when she sought succor from the ailments she suffered.1
Before we continue, we should note that French philosophy very much has its own style.
Whereas German philosophers are expected to be academically rigorous and precise, and the Americans to be pragmatists who are intimate with the rhythm of the natural world, and the English philosophers language-oriented and logical, a French philosopher is closer to a “rock star” than a stuffy professor or inveterate woodland hiker.
French philosophers are rather freestyle and can develop a fervent following in their society. They can be featured in gossip magazines and are known to marry supermodels.2 The French bring a certain flair philosophique to what can too often be a purely academic subject.
So, when a French philosopher achieves notoriety, it is not in some intellectual niche. She or he is understood to be one who participates fully in life and all its wonder and tragedy, becoming deeply persuasive within the culture.
When Simone Weil engaged ardently with Christian mysticism through her own personal experiences and the tensions she perceived between the common, the intellectual, and the transcendent, her writings and influence continued to grow, even posthumously.3
She has reached the point where her works are quoted by French presidents and Italian popes.4
Additionally, Weil was always close to the travails of the working class. Ever since her youth, she had been vocal in her support of those who had fewer rights and access to education and income as did Weil and her peers.
She marched in the streets with trade union members at the age of 10, organized the workers at a resort to strike for better wages while she was vacationing with her parents, and did what she could to erase the wall that existed between those with privilege and those without.
It was not easy for her. For one, she was a woman in a traditionally male field. Second, she wore glasses. Third, she was a Jew, and that prejudice is never far from reality even in contemporary Europe.
Of a startling intelligence, having already taught herself Greek and Sanskrit by 15, Weil was accepted at the École Normale Supérieure, the premier academy of higher learning, earning a first place in Philosophy.5
As objective experience viewed from afar was never her interest, Weil would immerse herself in her philosophic concern, suffering through casual bigotry and sexism, not to mention the disdain of her colleagues who criticized her for not joining, as did they, the Communist Party.6
While history is filled with philosophers and theologians who support the working class with lofty words and noble intentions, Weil was one of the few who actually quit her comfortable teaching job to take up work on the assembly line at the Renault automobile factory in a suburb of Paris in 1934.
The articles and books she would subsequently write, and for which she would become famous, were enriched by this experience as she worked through the physical difficulties of labor, the reality of poor wages, and the results of unfair business practices.
She also began to notice the importance of faith in the lives of those with whom she labored, and how they took strength, purpose, and a sense of Being from their participation in their Christian communities.
Then, her health began to suffer and she experienced something else. Neither philosophy, nor working class solidarity, nor academic achievement addressed the emptiness in her Being, exacerbated by her physical discomfort.
She found relief, hope, and a portion of happiness when witnessing the Mass, the consecration and reception of the Holy Communion, especially when accompanied by the richness of Christianity’s aural and visual art.
“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.”7
Thus was Simone Weil so inspired that, despite her unfamiliarity with Christianity, and her non-baptized status as one outside of the faith, she discovered that for which all mystics seek: transformation and a connection with God.8
Then, instead of scribbling about the pursuit of happiness in an unfair and unjust world, she began to write about her mystic perception. In so doing, she constructed a framework for spiritual realization that is simultaneously dense and delicate.
Divine Absence:
“He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.”
Unlike many philosophers, theologians, and mystics, Weil was untroubled by God's apparent absence. For her, God’s “withdrawal” from human affairs was a necessary condition for freedom and grace.
As God is neither a genie responding to wishes nor a supernatural micromanager, then it becomes the responsibility of human beings to exercise their free will to live in a manner that embraces love and faith.9 Doing so creates a bond, then, between creator and creation.
Instead of asking how God could permit evil to exist in the world, Weil understood that the question should be more reflective of our free will choices.
In other words, “How can We allow evil to exist in the world?”
Désoeuvrement [in this context, it means “surrender”]:
“The reality of the world is the result of our attachment. It is the reality of the self which we transfer into things. It has nothing to do with independent reality. That is only perceptible through total detachment. Should only one thread remain, there is still attachment.”
Weil believed that the mystical experience is impossible without surrendering individual ego to the divine. This is consistent with the standard mystical process of kenosis, or “the emptying.” As is common in all forms of Mysticism, not just Christian, one must surrender desire and preconceptions to see that which is otherwise obscured.
Souffrance [Suffering]:
“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”
Weil’s philosophy often focused on the theme of suffering, which she saw as a crucial aspect of the Christian mystical path. She believed that through suffering one could come to an understanding of God’s presence and absence.
Her mysticism involved participation in Christ’s suffering as an act of solidarity with humanity and with God.
The Holy Eucharist:
“Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.”
Though Weil’s personal relationship with the Christian Church was complex10, she had a reverence for the Eucharist. She knew it to be the union between the divine and human; a profound act of divine love matched with an equally profound admission of human humility, self-sacrifice, and surrender. Her reflections on the Eucharist mirrored her thoughts on the relationship of suffering and grace.
Grâce:
“There are four evidences of divine mercy here below. The favors of God to beings capable of contemplation (these states exist and form part of their experience as creatures). The radiance of these beings, and their compassion, which is the divine compassion in them. The beauty of the world. The fourth evidence is the complete absence of mercy here below.”
In her most important mystic work, Gravity and Grace, Weil explores the tension between "gravity" (the lure of the material world, ego, and self-centered-ness) and "grace" (that which leads the soul towards God).
The theme of divine intervention and the soul's struggle with earthly distractions is common in mystical writings, where theological grace is understood as something that cannot be controlled by human will but is instead a gift from the divine.11
As mentioned above, French philosophers are celebrities in their culture and of great social influence. As the events of the 20th century [two world wars, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the mortal awareness caused by the atomic bomb] moved French Existentialism from a Christian theology to a heavily secular and non-theistic philosophy, it was Simone Weil who kept it grounded in faith and the awareness of that which is beyond knowledge, yet is the goal of our inevitable, perpetual, and undeniable quest.
This also made Simone Weil, who died too young and a year before Paris was liberated from the Nazis, into a perpetual symbol of Christian Mysticism’s absence of boundaries. Even one who is far away from the source of all wisdom can be called, through suffering and unknowing and heart and passion, to a place of fulfillment and, well, grace.
For further reading most, if not all, of Weil’s books are still in print and still considered best-sellers in the field of Religious Philosophy. Also, they tend to be easy to find in local libraries.
She would die at the age of 34 from malnutrition and tuberculosis.
In the catalogue of doctoral publications on religion, there are over 5000 dissertations on file that are studies of some aspect of Weil’s thought.
Pope Paul VI considered Weil one of the three most influential people in the formation of his vocation.
Simone de Beauvoir, another prominent French feminist and philosopher, finished second. They did not get along as Weil’s philosophy focused on bringing about bonheur [happiness], especially to the working class, and de Beauvoir sought to bring signification [meaning] to life in general. Apparently, these are not compatible in French philosophy.
Communism had become a fad among French intellectuals before World War II. However, Weil had noticed that the bureaucrats of Communism were no more interested in the plight of the working class than were the bosses of capitalism. Then, as now, it is something that intellectuals are discouraged from noticing.
All the quotations in this post are taken from Weil’s Gravity and Grace, written in 1943 but published posthumously in 1947. The occupation of Paris by the Nazis made the process of arts and letters sluggish.
The French relationship between Judaism and Christianity has always been interesting. For example, the recent reconstruction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was mostly funded by a $122 million contribution from the Rothchild’s, a prominent Jewish family.
This is consistent with French philosophy of the 20th century. We create Hell and obscure Heaven through our choices. See Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit.
Weil causes me to recall the quip by Groucho Mars, “I could never join a club that would have me as a member.” She was often aloof from anything that was organized.
The Book of Common Prayer, page 858.
Another magnificent Mystic Monday! What an impactful life she had for such a short life. Thank you for sharing!