PhilosophySuffering

Simone Weil on the Lever of the Cross

This comes from her collection of mind-melding meditations, Gravity and Grace. The cross as a […]

Ethan Richardson / 9.26.13

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This comes from her collection of mind-melding meditations, Gravity and Grace.

The cross as a balance, as a lever. A going down, the condition of a rising up. Heaven coming down to earth raises earth to heaven. A lever. We lower when we want to lift.

…It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom. All pleasure-seeking is the search for an artificial paradise, an intoxication, an enlargement. But it gives us nothing except the experience that it is vain. Only the contemplation of our limitations and our misery puts us on a higher plane. ‘Whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.’ The upward movement in us is vain (and less than vain) if it does not come from a downward movement.

…When the whole universe weighs upon us there is no other counterweight possible but God himself–the true God, for in this case false gods cannot do anything, not even under the name of the true one. Evil is infinite in the sense of being indefinite: matter, space, time. Nothing can overcome this kind of infinity except the true infinity. That is why on the balance of the cross a body which was frail and light but which was God, lifted up the whole world. ‘Give me a point of leverage and I will lift up the world.’ This point of leverage is the cross. There can be no other. It has to be at the intersection of the world and that which is not the world. The cross is this intersection.

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COMMENTS

2 responses to “Simone Weil on the Lever of the Cross”

1. Gino says:

   09/26/2013 at 8:55 pm

   Thank you for this; I was really needing it today!

   Peace,
   Gino

   Reply
2. On Wasting My Young Years - Mockingbird says:

   03/28/2022 at 11:44 am

   […] the now and reach some ideal summer of relaxation in the future. In Gravity and Grace, philosopher Simone Weil discusses the idea of renouncing these idealized notions of past and future, writing that “past […]

   Reply