Waiting for God

Waiting for God is a posthumous collection assembled by Father Joseph-Marie Perrin from the letters and essays Simone Weil sent him in the year before her death in 1943. The first half gathers six letters written from Marseilles, the longest of which — "Spiritual Autobiography" — traces Weil's path from early agnosticism through an unexpected encounter with Christ during a Holy Week liturgy at the Abbey of Solesmes in 1938. The second half collects four essays, among them "The Love of God and Affliction," which develops malheur (affliction) as the state in which the soul is stripped of all consolation and most exposed to grace, and the school-studies essay, which argues that attention — empty, suspended, receptive thought — is the foundational discipline of both intellectual work and prayer.

Weil never accepted baptism, despite her mystical experiences and her close friendship with Perrin. Her reasons — that she felt called to remain at the threshold between the Church and those outside it — run through the letters and give the book its distinctive texture: neither a convert's testimony nor a formal theological treatise, but a sustained act of witness to a position held under interior pressure. The book is the most accessible single entry into Weil's religious writing and remains the standard first text for readers approaching her.

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Reception

Waiting for God has been continuously in print since the 1951 French edition and the 1951 Putnam / Routledge English translation, and stands alongside Gravity and Grace as the canonical compact of Weil's religious writing. Her work has been read across denominations — by Albert Camus, who edited her into the Espoir series after her death; by T.S. Eliot, who wrote the introduction to The Need for Roots; by later Catholic theologians (Soskice, Cunningham) — and across philosophical traditions hostile to religion, including by Susan Sontag and Iris Murdoch. Recent reassessments (Chenavier, Springsted, Wallace) have placed her attention-discipline alongside contemporary contemplative-practice literature, while critics from Czeslaw Milosz to John Hellman have argued that her refusal of baptism and her writings on affliction are sometimes read more sentimentally than her own austere prose warrants.

Frequently asked

What is Waiting for God?

It is a posthumous collection of letters and essays by Simone Weil, assembled by Father Joseph-Marie Perrin from materials she sent him in 1942–43. The letters record her resistance to formal baptism despite a mystical encounter with Christ; the essays develop attention and affliction as central contemplative concepts.

Why did Simone Weil refuse baptism?

Weil describes her reasons in the "Spiritual Autobiography" letter. She felt called to remain outside the Church — at the threshold, in solidarity with those who are excluded or who cannot accept Christianity. She regarded her hesitation as a form of vocation rather than unbelief.

What does the book say about attention?

In the school-studies essay, Weil argues that attention — a mode of empty, suspended, receptive thinking — is the core discipline of both study and prayer. Practising this kind of attention in any domain, from geometry to scripture, is said to cultivate the same fundamental capacity for openness to what the soul cannot grasp by effort.