Wrestling with God

By Simone Weil
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(2008)

Discussion Guide Included.

A brief introduction to the spiritual journey and thinking of this great mystic and advocate for the oppressed.

Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a philosopher, activist, and later mystic whose writings have influenced thinkers as diverse as Albert Camus and Pope Paul VI. Her life was marked by rigorous intellectual integrity, profound identification with the poor and suffering, and an astonishing conversion from agnosticism to trust in Christ in the midst of the upheavals of World War II.

Weil’s account of finding the mercy and love of God in the midst of severe suffering is bracing and challenging. For her, ultimate concerns are never separated from practical concerns. Our selections include two longer letters where Weil tells a friend about her unexpected spiritual journey, as well as a journal entry about a mysterious encounter with Christ. McDonald’s foreword includes an overview of the broad range of her philosophical and practical interests illustrated with brief selections from her other writings on themes including friendship, justice, suffering, truth, calling, and human rights.

Yet I still half refused, not my love but my intelligence. For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. . . .

That made me see intellectual honesty in a new light. Till then I had only thought of it as opposed to faith; your words made me think that perhaps, without my knowing it, there were in me obstacles to the faith, impure obstacles, such as prejudices, habits. I felt that after having said to myself for so many years simply: “Perhaps all that is not true,” I ought, without ceasing to say it—I still take care to say it very often now—to join it to the opposite formula, namely: “Perhaps all that is true,” and to make them alternate.

Simone Weil

Simone Weil is a great soul and a brilliant mind.

T. S. Eliot

Category: Readings (No. 50)