1. Essays & Reflections:
As promised last week, today I offer you three essays written on Simone Weil by the New Moot, a local EDI reading-thinking-writing group. They were all provoked by reading her essay on the Iliad: “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force.” This first essay by Jeff Reimer suggests that while Weil’s reading of the Iliad
is illuminating, ultimately she got it wrong. According to Reimer,
Weil repeatedly emphasizes the dynamics of force that undermine genuine vulnerability in the meeting between Achilles and Priam. But this gets the thrust of the passage exactly backwards. The fact that the two men can meet at all – men who are at war and whose very livelihoods depend on the destruction of the other – and still recognize each other’s vulnerability and humanity is the true miracle of the poem.
2. Essays & Reflections:
Matthew Umbarger is also critical of Weil for her “blindness to the whole testimony of the Old Covenant…” For the Hebrews, Weil argues, “misfortune was a sure indication of sin and hence a legitimate object of contempt …. And no text of the Old Testament strikes a note comparable to the note heard in the Greek epic, unless it be certain parts of the book of Job.” Umbarger thus wonders “if her failure to appreciate the faith of her own Jewish people in the First Covenant presented a stumbling block to her being baptized into the New.” And he labels her biblical framework as “deuteronomistic theology,” i.e., a this-worldly principle that equates obedience with material blessing and disobedience with punishing curses. But is this simplistic formula really what the Old Testament teaches?
3. Essays & Reflections:
The final essay by Stuart Busenitz turns to The Lord of the Rings, focusing on “Tolkien’s Epic Genius: The Ring, Force, and Redemption.” According to Busenitz,
Amidst the clash of good and evil, light and darkness, beauty and horror, the hobbits shine brighter and resist longer than the seemingly more powerful agents of good [i.e., Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, Aragorn]. Their virtue is constructed on generations of sacramental living wherein the simple pleasures and beauty of life are enjoyed in their proper portion and order resulting in a formidable buffer between the allure of absolute force presented in the possession of the one ring.
More:
The smallness of hobbits, both in stature and power, allows them to navigate through the perils of darkest temptations that the mighty dare not tread. The humility grown in sacramental living – wherein the eating of simple food and excellent beer is more to be wished than the ambition of an emperor – allows darkness, ugliness, and evil to engulf its own destruction.
4. Books: Three books by Simone Weil with a bonus.
5. Poetry: "Love" (III) by George Herbert (and the conversion of Simone Weil)
Holy Week, sacraments, and poetry were pivotal to Simone Weil’s pilgrimage toward Christianity. Read (and memorize it like Simone Weil did!) Herbert’s poem after reading the following excerpt from a letter written in Marseilles, France (May 15, 1942) to her friend Fr. Perrin about liturgy, poetry, and mystical experiences:
In 1938 I spent ten days at Solesmes, from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, following all the liturgical services. I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration I was able to rise above this wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all.
There was a young English Catholic there from whom I gained my first idea of the supernatural power of the sacraments because of the truly angelic radiance with which he seemed to be clothed after going to communion. Chance – for I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence – made of him a messenger to me. For he told me of the existence of those English poets of the seventeenth century who are named metaphysical. In reading them later on, I discovered the poem of which I read you what is unfortunately a very inadequate translation. It is called “Love.” I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I make myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me.... Moreover, in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.
7. Liturgy: Feast day of St Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome
Hymn of Praise by St Nikolai Velimirovic
St Martin the Pope speaks before the Senate:
“Let my body be crushed and burned.
The most cruel sufferings will I joyfully endure,
But the true Faith will I not deny.
The Good Savior was God and man.
He had two natures and two wills,
But both natures were in one Person,
And both wills in a single light.
Such a Faith all the Fathers passed on to us;
For such a Faith many suffered.
May I suffer also, I the least of all,
A servant of my Lord, and of all the most sinful!”
Thus Martin confessed his faith to all,
Speaking truth before the heretics.
Oh, the worth of a man when he fears God!
Above little men he stands like a mountain!
Apolytikion in the Third Tone
Thou dids’t strengthen the Church with true doctrine, O wise Hierarch Martin; thou didst declare the two natures of Christ and put heresy to shame. Pray to Him to grant us His great mercy.
Kontakion in Plagal of the Fourth Tone
O High Priest and Teacher of Mysteries, thou didst pour forth streams of doctrine; thou didst expound the true theology that Christ has two natures and wills. Intercede for those who cry: Rejoice, blessed Father Martin.
8. Word from the Fathers: Matins for Holy and Great Monday (in the East)
Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching, but unworthy is he whom He shall find in slothfulness. Beware, then, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep, lest thou be given over to death and shut out from the Kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O God: through the Theotokos have mercy upon us.
Today the Holy Passion shines forth upon the world with the light of salvation; for Christ in His love hastens to His sufferings. He who holds all things in the hollow of His hand consents to be hung upon the Tree, that He may save mankind.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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