Simone Weil

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.

What lover, in the fevered ecstasy of her love, has not proclaimed her desire to die for the sake of the beloved?

Like all mystics, she reminds us that our souls will not be satisfied with anything else. While others have used music and poetry to convey this discovery, Weil expressed it through a life of self-denial. She wanted nothing about herself–in her life or in her writings–to distract from her role as witness. Thanks to her, those of us not similarly focused can catch a glimpse of “that transcendent kingdom” which she came to know.

We pray not to change our circumstances, but to change ourselves, and specifically, to increase our capacity for loving attention, which is the one thing that can really help the downhearted and broken-spirited among us.

THE KEY TO A CHRISTIAN conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies. Most school tasks have a certain intrinsic interest as well, but such an interest is secondary. All tasks that really call upon the power of attention are interesting for the same reason and to an almost equal degree.

School children and students who love God should never say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I like Greek.” They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

Perhaps he who made the unsuccessful effort will one day be able to grasp the beauty of a line of Racine33 more vividly on account of it. But it is certain that this effort will bear its fruit in prayer. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The best support for faith is the guarantee that if we ask our Father for bread, he does not give us a stone. Quite apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit. An Eskimo story explains the origin of light as follows: “In the eternal darkness, the crow, unable to find any food, longed for light, and the earth was illumined.” If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light that is desired if all other incentives are absent. Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul