Introduction
Suffering is the experience in one’s deepest being of the evil that is everywhere in the world.[1] According to Simone Weil, in the realm of suffering, affliction is set apart as something that grips the soul and marks it to the depths. In her opinion, affliction is inseparable from physical suffering and yet also quite distinct.[2] She describes it as an, ‘uprooting of life, a more or less protracted equivalent to death’. True affliction occurs when an event grasps a life and attacks it directly or indirectly in all its factors; social, psychological and physical.[3]
Simone Weil was a French philosopher who, although she refused to be baptized, had deep religious insights and a faith which embraced most fundamental Christian beliefs. From an early age, Simone had a strong sense of justice, self-sacrifice and absolute compassion and empathy for those suffering. This manifested itself in extreme generosity and the refusal of any of life’s comforts, she would even send her own meager rations to soldiers in the trenches.[4]She was a very intelligent woman and towards the end of her life she produced some of her finest writings, including ‘Awaiting God’. It is in this book that Simone outlines her belief that, ‘divine love is the perfect model of justice’, and that this divine love can only be understood through attention, affliction, and consent to the absence of God.[5]In this essay I will begin by exploring further Simone’s understanding of this ‘divine love’ and how affliction makes the soul ready to receive it. Exploring her work will take us to her theology of the cross and the suffering of Jesus, where, Simone says, is exactly where those struck by affliction meet God. Throughout the essay, I will access the way in which charismatic theology today views suffering and how Simone’s insights might help us as the Church to support those who are afflicted.
Download Simone Weil on Affliction and the Cross
[1]Margaret A. Agnew, “Suffering,” The Furrow29 (1978)p. 19.
[2] Simone Weil, Awaiting God (Paris: Attente de Dieu, 1951)p. 31.
[4]Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, “The Cross, the Flesh, and the Absent God: Finding Justice through Love and Affliction in Simone Weil's Writings,” The Journal of Religion 88 (2008)p. 56.
[5]Willox, “The Cross, the Flesh, and the Absent God” The Journal of Religion p. 54.
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