EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE WEIL A STUDY IN COMMITMENT

M ADELEINE GRACE

How does one respond to overpowering evil? How does one confront an evil which may term inate one's life? Those who lived amid the World War II German experience as they saw the devastation brought about by the person of H itler were faced with such questions. Many fled w ith the basic instinct of self preservation leading them on. Others could do none other than fight in whatever way their conscience saw fit.

Two women who gave their lives for this cause are Edith Stein and Simone Weil. Their backgrounds have some sim i­larities yet vast differences and their motivating forces also vary. The end product was, however, the same and their loss rem ains with us today. It is the purpose of this study to dis­tinguish their motivating forces and determ ine w hat might be drawn from them for all who look back and those who learn anew of the horror of this time period. Perhaps a look at their early life and education will provide some clues.

Edith Stein was born October 12, 1891 on the Jewish feast of the Atonement in Breslaw (Silesia) in to a Jewish family of great faith. She was the youngest child of seven', her father dying of a heat stroke while on a business trip when she was two2.

This sudden death left her industrious m other w ith a tim ber business to m anage. F rau Stein purchased whole forests, knew how to judge standing tim ber and m ade busi­ness trips across Silesia to the Balkans3. The family reached

1 Jean de Fabregues, Edith Stein (Staten Island/ New York: Alba Elouse, 1965),11.

2 Edith Stein, Collected Works o f Edith Stein Sister Teresa Benedicta o f the Cross D isca lced C arm elite 1891-1942, vol. 1, Life in a Jew ish Family 1891-1916 (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1986), 41, hereafter cited as Stein, Life in a Jew­ish Family.

3 Fabregues, 11.

Teresianum 44 (1993/1) 199-219

200 MADELEINE GRACE

a level of prosperity which the children attribu ted to their m other's goodness ra ther than business efficiency. The poor craftsm en could tell how Frau Stein would sell them the wood they needed and not infrequently retu rn the purchase money4.

Edith's m other was determ ined to see that each of her children received a good education5. W hen E dith 's sister E m a began classes, Edith was very anxious to go w ith her, but the Prussian schools did not allow a child to a ttend be­fore the age of six. The only com prom ise was to send the young Edith to a kindergarten which hu rt her pride. She preferred to learn to read and write w ith the older children rather than play with the babies. Thus, kindergarten had to be given up. Edith 's elder sister Else prom ised th a t if she passed her teacher's exam ination w ith d istinction , she would ask the headm aster if Edith m ight enter the school on her sixth b irthday . This m ission was successfully achieved. Edith excelled in her classes bu t never received the first place award. The youngest Stein attribu ted this to the headm aster's anti-Sem itism , w hich was said to be w idespread in Germ any, particu larly am ong the profes­sional classes6.

At the age of 10, Edith attended a funeral of a business associate of her m other who had shot himself. She recalled the words of the rabbi: "And when the body returns to dust, the spirit returns to God who gave it"7. There was nothing of faith in a personal life after death, nor any belief in a future reunion with those who had died. In la ter years, she was to attend a Catholic funeral. The contrast m ade a deep im ­pression upon her. There was no m ention of the achieve­m ents or reputation of the deceased. Rather, "called by his baptism al nam e alone, the hum ble soul, in all its poverty was com m ended to divine mercy. But how consoling and calling were the words of the liturgy which accom panied the deceased into eternity!"8

4 Sister Teresia de spiritu Sancto Posselt, O.D.C. Edith Stein (N ew York: Sheed and Ward, 1952) 9.

5 Stein, Life in a Jewish Family, 43.6 Hilda C. Graef, The Scholar and the Cross The Life and Work o f Edith Stein

(Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press), 6-7.7 Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family, 81.8 Ibid.

EDITH STEIN AND SIM ONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 201

A year la ter Edith heard of ano ther suicide by her fa­ther's youngest brother. She found that the econom ic w ar against the Jews had ruined m any and led to a lack of belief in any prospect of life in eternity9. She confessed la ter that from the ages of th irteen to twenty-one, she was an atheist. F rau S tein w as p roud of h er d au g h te r 's in te llec tua l achievem ents bu t disturbed at this lack of religion in her life.

In 1908 Edith passed the difficult entrance exam to the S tud ienansta lt and spent the next th ree years learning Latin, higher m ath plus the other school subjects. She pur­sued her studies at Breslau and there constantly ran into ci­tations from Edm und Husserl's Logical Investigations. After reading this work, she decided that she m ust go to Gottin­gen to study under him. Edith was in troduced to Husserl through Adolf Reinach, who was a Jew led to Christ before his death in the First World War. Another, influence which entered Edith's life at this time was the Jewish philosopher Max Scheler, who also would en ter the Catholic faith. At th is tim e Scheler was full of Catholic ideas w hich Stein could no longer by-pass. Husserl did not approve of his stu­dents taking their doctorate first and then their Staatsexa- men. He thought that one should concentrate on philosophy first which would fam iliarize one w ith the subjects and m ethods of other branches of study. He did agree to allow Edith to choose a subject for her dissertation which was the problem of em pathy10.

In this work, she described em pathy as "the act of per­ceiving". She looked upon her endeavor as an attem pt to study "the experience of foreign consciousness in general." She believed that through this experience,

human beings comprehend the psychic life of their fel­low s... as believers they comprehend the love, the anger and the precepts of their God in this way; and God can compre­hend people's lives in no other way. As the possessor of com ­plete knowledge, God is not mistaken about people's experi­ences, as people are mistaken about each others' experiences.

9 Ibid., 82.10 Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family, 269.

202 MADELEINE GRACE

But people's experiences do not become God's own, either; nor do they nave the same kind of givenness for Him."Edith likewise envisioned em pathy as a corrective for

one's self perception. As she pointed out, one can have "as m any 'in terpretations ' of my psychic individual as I can have interpreting subjects." However, when the in terp reta­tion is "empathically fulfilled," the em pathic acts may be in conflict with the "primordial experience." The "empathized interpretation" is then exposed as a deception and a correc­tion may follow.

Luckily, I not only have the possibility of bringing my ex­perience to givenness to reiterated empathy, but can also bring it to givenness primordially in inner perception. Then I have it immediately given, not mediated by its expression or by bod­ily appearances.12She finished her thesis in the w in ter of 1916 and re ­

turned to Breslau where she took the place of a sick teacher at her old school. After Husserl got around to reading her thesis, she graduated the following August of 1916. Husserl had just taken a professorship at Freiburg University. There, Edith became his assistant. During this time she worked on his m anu scrip ts and pu rsu ed her ow n ph ilosophical works13.

Simone Weil was the second child and only daughter bom (February 3, 1909) to Doctor Bernard Weil, a physician, and his wife Selm a14 Simone was a sickly child, suffering from appendicitis in infancy, and having other attacks later. She was so sick from her eleventh to her twenty-second month, that there was little hope of her becoming a norm al child. Undergoing surgery at the age of three and a half, she had a slow recovery15. Doctor Weil was a distinguished Paris

11 Edith Stein, The Collected Works o f Edith Stein, vol. 3, On the Problem o f Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989), 11.

12 Ibid., 88-89.13 Graef, 9-27.14 Richard Rees, Sim one Weil A Sketch for a Portrait (carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press, 1966), 12.15 Simone Petrement, Sim one Weil A Life, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 7-8.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 203p h y s ic ia n 16 and both he and his wife freethinking Jews. They raised their children w ithout religious instruction but in an atm osphere of "high and eclectic m oral culture"17. W hen the First World W ar broke out, Doctor Weil volun­teered. Mme Weil, determ ined th at the family would stay together followed him to the various m ilitary hospitals during this time. Simone and her b ro ther Andre were en­couraged by their m other to forego chocolate and sugar and to save up their ration to send to their "war godsons" — sol­diers whose families were behind the front lines, who could not receive packages from hom e and were "adopted" by other French families. In addition to these sacrifices, Si­mone did chores to buy her "godson" modest, useful gifts18.

After the war, the Weils settled in Paris and determ ined that their two children, Andre and Simone, receive the best education possible. Simone endured a period of "bottomless despair" during adolescence. This experience could have been due to her com parison to her brother, Andre, the fact that he was gifted in m athem atics and that he three years older, or it could have its origins in the belittling rem arks of a schoolm istress whom she took very seriously19. She was concerned with the definition of genius.

After months of inner darkness I gained, suddenly and forever, the certainty that any human being at all, even if his natural faculties are almost nil, finds his way into that realm of truth which is reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and makes a perpetual effort of attention so as to reach it. In this way he too becom es a genius, even though, for want of talent, no genius is externally visible20.Simone's interest in the working class stems from these

early years. While traveling w ith her friend Sim one Pe- trem ent on the subway at the age of sixteen, she rem arked that it was not only out of a spirit of "justice" that she loved them. She said that she loved them "naturally. I find them

16 Doctor W eil was originally from Strasbourg and his w ife from Rostov-on- Don. See Petrement, 3-4.

17 Rees, 12.18 Dorothy Tuck McFarland, Sim one Weil (New York: Frederick Ungar Pub­

lishing Co., 1983), 12-14.19 Ibid., 16.20 Simone Weil, as quoted by Rees, 14.

204 MADELEINE GRACE

more beautiful than the bourgeois"21. It seems reasonable to assume that her later interests in politics and social reform were a consequence of her interest in working class people22.

Simone passed her first baccalaureate exam in June of1924 when she was fifteen. She enrolled in the Lycee Victor- Duruy in order to study philosophy under the em inent philosopher Rene le Senne and there received her baccalau­reate in philosophy in June of 1925. She had decided that she would be a teacher of philosophy and thus in the fall of1925 entered the Lycee Henri IV for two to three years of study to prepare for the exam inations required for entrance into the Ecole Norm ale Superieure, the grande ecole, in which the elite of upper lycee and university teachers are trained. She studied und er the renow ned Alain (Emile C hartier)23. Simone Petrem ent, Sim one's friend for m any years, believed that Weil owed "an essential pa rt of her thought to Alain". In most situations, Alain preached obedi­ence. He believed that revolt alm ost always ended by rein­forcing the present powers and m aking the citizen more of a slave. He did spread a spirit of inquiry, resistance, the de­term ination to judge freely and keep the determ ining powers w ithin their limits through the force exerted by opinion24. The young philosophy student felt free to criticize Alain, however, "his shortcoming is to have rejected pain"25. Of the great philosophers, Sim one preferred Descartes. H er God was that of Descartes. "The true God... is what is infallible in m yself"26. She offered a proof for the existence of God, consisting in the fact that

value and existence are one and the same thing in respect to thought. Insofar as it exists, thought has value, and insofar as it is value it exists. If a thought has value, it is because it is truly a thought, because it exists as a thought and cannot not exist; and, reciprocally if it exists as thought, it has value27.

21 Pétrement, 43.22 McFarland, 18.23 Ibid., 19-20.24 Pétrement, 25.25 Ibid., 38.26 Ibid., 67.27 Ibid.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE WEIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 205Simone's conception of w hat she wanted to do with her

life was colored by the fact that she considered it a m isfor­tune to have been born female. She tried to disregard her femininity so that this obstacle would be reduced28.

Simone had what may have been term ed a "congenital predisposition" for headaches, which caused her great dis­comfort in later years. She, like her father who suffered from the same affliction, did not eat when she had migraines. Her condition was considered to be m ore serious and painful than that of her father29.

Thus it can be seen that Edith and Simone shared some similarities on background: living during the same time pe­riod each raised in a family which prized education sharing a Jewish heritage though not believers in the faith, pos­sessing keen intellects and th irsting for knowledge in the philosophical arena which would ultim ately lead them to the threshold of spiritual experience.

W hereas Edith 's non-believing years in reference to Ju ­daism may find its source in her own inner struggles with faith and some Jewish beliefs Sim one's lack of practice of the Jewish faith contained an intellectual root w hich ex­tended far beyond her parent's heritage. She rejected Israel w ith hostility and also the Old Testament, w ith the excep­tion of some books. It is difficult to surm ise reasons for her antagonism tow ard the religion of Israel. Perhaps her ou t­look could be best explained by her innate pessimism, her denial of and alienation from life, w hich is incom patible with the Old Testament conception and affirm ation of bless­ing30. A further sequence to this belief was that Simone wrote the M inister of Education in November of 1940, inquiring "What is a Jew?" (for Jews at this time could no longer hold teaching positions). She did not see herself as having three or m ore Jewish grandparents as the law stated. Rather she believed: "mine is the Christian, French, Greek tradition. The Hebrew tradition is alien to me, and no S tatute can make it otherwise"31.

28 Ibid., 27.29 Ibid., 70.30 George A. Panichos, ed., The Sim one Weil Reader (New York: David McKay

Company, Inc., 1977), xxiv-xxvi.31 "What Is a Jew? A Letter to a Minister o f Education," ibid., 80.

206 MADELEINE GRACE

There is a significant contrast betw een E dith and Si­mone concerning femininity. As noted earlier, Sim one dis­regarded her fem ininity. S im one's friend, S im one Pe- trement, recalled that the young philosopher's way of dress­ing became "more and more that of a poor person or a monk, ... she was determ ined to be a m an as m uch as possible". It could have been a sense of mischief, which sometime.: gave her pleasure in shocking people, or a contem pt for bourgeois customs. Further, Sim one's will tow ard accom plishm ents left her little time for other m atters32. Edith gave lectures spanning the topics of wom an's education, spirituality, in­trinsic value in national life, the ethos of wom en's profes­sion among other topics. She perceived a threefold goal pre­scribed by the nature of woman:

the development of her humanity, her wom anhood,and her individuality. These are not separate goals, just as the nature of a particular human individual is not divided into three parts but is one: it is human nature of a specifically fem­inine and individual character33.The philosophical pursuits of each of thesa women led

them into rather different arenas over the next several years. During the time that Edith served as an assistant to Husserl, failing to obtain a lectureship at Gottingen, she spent much of her vacation tim e at Bergzaber in the palatinate. Her friend Hedwig ConradM artius and her husband were run ­ning a farm. She could not sleep one night in the sum m er of 1921 and picked up Teresa of Avila's Autobiography34. When she laid the book down, she said very simply, "This is the Truth". Teresa's story is one of Christ drawing the soul to prayer. Edith was already in that experience. She bought a catechism and missal after she m ade up her m ind to be­come a Catholic. W hen she approached a priest, he found her versed in the Catholic faith, full of supernatural faith, with the desire to live the Christian life in its integrity. She was baptized on New Year's day, 1922. In a certain way, her m ind had been prepared through Scheler and Reinach.

32 Pétrement, 28.33 Edith Stein, Edith Steins Werke quoted in The Collected Works o f Edith Stein,

vol. 2, Essays on W oman, 9.34 Posselt, 64.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 207Thus, the culm ination of her spiritual journey was reached when she met Teresa of Avila. Edith 's m other wept upon hearing of the conversion. This distance between Edith and her m other was a great heartache to the young convert35.

Edith secured a teaching position at the D om inican convent school at Speyer. There she taught Germ an gram ­m ar and literature for eight years (1922-31), actually living the life of a religious. She became known as a conscientious professor, devoted to her students. During her spare time she translated the Letters and Journals o f Cardinal Newman. At this time Edith made the acquaintance of Father Przy- wara who sensed the richness of her soul and m ind. He asked her to translate St. Thomas' Quaestiones Disputate de Veritate into German. The young convert perceived the point of departure for Thom as as "God and his relation to cre­ation" in contrast to Husserl's purified consciousness. She came to the realization that philosophy can lead only to metaphysics, to the knowledge of being, to ontology and on­tology can lead only to God36.

Edith began her lectures series for women in 1928. She was now speaking with Father Przywara and Dom Walzer, a Benedictine, whose advice she had sought on retreat at Beu- ron Abbey, about entry into Carmel. They both advised against it, stating that she was needed in the world to tell the women of Germany what she did37.

In the spring of 1932, when Edith accepted the tutorial position at the Educational Institute in M unster, H itler be­gan to carry out his plans which would bring him to power. During this time, Edith always looked upon herself as one of the vanquished people despite her conversion experience. She encouraged her students to form anti-N azi Groups. Eventually, the Jew ish boycott would prevent her from teaching. Everything around her seemed to direct her to Carmel38. When Edith was refused her teaching position, she again considered Carmel which she had now waited twelve years to join. While the objections of her m other and the influence she had exercised on Catholic life had prevented

35 Fabregues, 48-55.36 Ibid., 56-66.37 Ibid., 67-75.38 Ibid., 87-88.

208 MADELEINE GRACE

her earlier, these hesitancies had now vanished. She could no longer teach and she assum ed that her m other would prefer to see her in a Catholic convent than teaching in South America where she was offered a position39.

W hen she went to the Church of St. Ludger on Good Shepherd Sunday, she told herself that she would not leave until she could see clearly w hether she should enter Carmel. At the final blessing, she received the Good Shepherd's con­sent. She wrote home that she had been accepted by some Sisters in Cologne and would be going there in October. Her family thought it a new appointm ent and congratulated her. Upon hearing the decision in its entirety, Edith 's m other took the news very hard. The other m em bers of the family did not understand the decision either, except her sister Rosa who had been with the Church in her heart for some time. This response was influenced by the reality of a family burdened by a business going badly. Edith was com forted when Sister M arianne from the Ursuline convent visited her m other several times. Edith spent these last days before en­tering with her mother, attending the synagogue service of the Feast of Tabernacles w ith her. She took the tra in to Cologne, spending one night in Cologne with her Godchild, and entering Carmel the following day. Thus, Edith 's for­mal professional life ended and her journey tow ard Christ in carrying His Cross became m ore apparent40 Simone Weil chose to follow the experiential road of the worker during some part of her professional career. Between 1931, when Simone took up a first teaching appointm ent at the Lycee for girls at Lepuy, and her return from the Spanish Civil W ar in 1936, she was absorbed in labor problems and politics. This overriding in terest however did not in terfere w ith her concern for her pupils. She offered supplem entary lectures on the history of science which were attended voluntarily by the whole class41.

In observing the conditions of the working class, Simone argued that the proletariat had great difficulties in regimes in all areas of the political spectrum . The technocrat elite were becoming the great oppressors. The class struggle was

39 Posselt, 120.40 Ibid., 120-32.41 Rees, 22.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 209no longer adequate to the proletariat situation. In her "Re­flections concerning the Causes of Liberty and Social Op­pression" (1934), she voiced her belief that there are "new demons" which the fathers of com m unism had not envi­sioned.

Work is no longer done with the proud consciousness that it is being useful, but with the hum iliating and agonizing feeling of enjoying a privilege bestowed by a temporary stroke of fortune... that one enjoys, in short, a job ... Technical progress seems to have gone bankrupt, since instead of happi­ness it has only brought the masses that physical and moral wretchedness in which we see them floundering... As for sci­entific progress, it is difficult to see what can be the use of pil­ing up still more knowledge onto a heap already m uch too vast to be able to be embraced even in the minds of special­ists42.Her words bear need of amplification. W hat is technical

progress? W hat factors play a part in it? Later in the same work, she referred to "an unlim ited increase in production"42. The vagueness of the terminology brings further questions. In th is essay, she calls fo r the abo litio n of social oppression44.

Simone spent nine m onths at the Alsthom and two other factories. During this time, she spoke for pacifism, yet partic­ipated in the Spanish Civil War. A cooking accident caused her hospitalization at Sitges during this W ar and led to her return to France. Upon leaving Spain, in August of 1935, she felt that she was m arked forever with the brand of a slave. From her experience there, she believed that no war can ever advance the cause of freedom but ra ther strengthens bu­reaucracy against the individual; yet three years later, in 1939, she would renounce her pacifist views45.

After she returned from Spain, her father persuaded her to take a year's leave from teaching to recover her health. Thus, she took a holiday in Italy. Sometime between 1935 and 1940, sim one's religious outlook deepened. She re­marked herself that for a long time, the name of God had no

42 Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1958), 37-38.

43 Ibid., 47.44 Ibid., 55.45 Reess, 33-40.

210 MADELEINE GRACE

place in her thoughts. W hen she visited Santa M aria Degli Angeli, she recorded that she was im pelled by "something stronger" than herself to kneel down and pray. After re tu rn­ing from the Italian holiday, she began teaching at the Lycee yet had to stop due to chronic headaches. She accom panied her m other at E aster in 1938 to hear Gregorian m usic at Solesmes46. At this time she received her own touch from the divine. Stating that she was suffering from these splitting headaches, she was able to "rise above this wretched flesh... to find a pure and perfect joy in the unim aginable beauty of the chanting and the words." She further recorded that this experience enabled her to better understand the possibility "of loving divine love in the m idst of affliction". It was during these services that "the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all"47.

The experience led Simone to look for Christian values in older religious and philosophical traditions48. W hen she was approached about entrance into the Catholic faith, she replied:

Christianity should contain all vocations without excep­tion since it is catholic. In consequence the Church should also. But in my eyes Christianity is catholic by right but not in fact. So many things are outside it, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise they would not be in existence. All the im m ense stretches of past centuries except the last twenty are among them; all the countries inhabited by colored races; all secular life in the white peoples' countries: in the history of these coun­tries, all the traditions banned as heretical, those of the Manicheans and Albigenses for instance; all those things re­sulting from the renaissance, too often degraded but not quite without value.Christianity being catholic by right but not in fact, I regard it as legitimate on my part to be a member of the Church by right but not in fact, not only for a time, but for my whole life if need be49.Simone found th at some of her own countrym en be­

lieved in a special relationship hetween France and Divine

46 Rees, 40-57.47 Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York: Harper Colophone Books, 1973),

68.48 Rees, 60.49 Weil, Waiting for God, 75.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE WEIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 211

Providence. This group included such distinguished ind i­viduals as Charles Peguy, Jacques M aritain, Paul Claudel, among others. Simone found this distasteful. Some of the French attributed the rise of Hitler to "German national pe­culiarities, to a mysterious movement called Nazism, o r to the evil genius of Adolf Hitler"50. This assum ption was far less dem anding than going through the self scrutiny to dis­cern origins of Hitlerism in oneself. H itler wanted to play a part in history. She believed that the Roman impulse lay at Hitlerism 's root cause. The purgation af H itlerism could be accom plished w ithin each individual's m ind. It required consciously "modifying the scope of the sentim ent attached to greatness"51. Her attachm ent to the teachings of Jesus are linked to her efforts to resist Hitler. She was sensitive to the Roman element in H itlerism and was struck by w hat she perceived as Jesus ' an ti-R om an and an ti-im p eria lis t outlook52. This sentim ent countered what she saw as a per­verted nationalism and patriotism in her time.

In the Gospels, there is not the least indication that Christ experienced anything resem bling love for Jerusalem and Judea, save only the love which goes wrapped in compassion. He never showed any other kind of attachment to his country. But his compassion he expressed on more than one occasion. He wept over the city, foreseeing... the destruction which should shortly fall upon it53.From the very beginning of W orld W ar II, Sim one

wanted to be an active participant. W hen a student uprising in Prague failed, she devised a plan to parachute French arms and volunteers, including herself, into Czechoslovakia to help support a popular resistance movement. Her idea was dismissed by political figures. She then devised the no­tion of organizing a corps of nurses who would accompany soldiers on the front lines into battle in order to give em er­gency first aid to the wounded. She received an equally firm re jec tio n 54. W hen her family moved from Paris th at was

50 John Heilman, Sim one Weil An Introduction to Her Thought (Waterloo, On­tario, Canada: W ilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982), 44.

51 Ibid., 45.52 Ibid., 37-46.53 Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (N ew York: Harper: Colophon Books,

1972), 170.54 McFarland, 99.

212 MADELEINE GRACE

soon to be occupied to Marseilles, Sim one m ade the ac­quaintance of Father Perrin with whom she com m enced the correspondence concerning the question of her baptism . It was during this in terim that she wrote her com m entary on the Lord's Prayer and met Gustave Thibone, whose land she worked during the grape harvest5S.

In recounting portions of the professional life and reli­gious development of Edith and Simone, it can easily be as­certained that a philosophical th rust was a m ajor tool in leading them to their own realization of God. The rise of H itler placed a m ajor obstacle in their professional careers as they could not teach. Each, by her words or writings, saw H itler for w hat he was and urged others to reject him. W hereas Sim one en tered the political a rena basically through the subject m atter of her works, Edith rem ained w ithin the religious and philosophical domain.

The future Carmelite's concern for her own people led her to a request for an audience with the Pope, hoping that an encyclical m ight help the plight of the Jews. She learned that she had no chance of a private audience owing to the pressure of business in Rome. Only an audience of a small group could be arranged. This did not serve Edith's purpose so she gave up the idea and subm itted her plea in writing. Her letter was handed sealed to the Holy Father56. It was not long after this that she lost her teaching position57.

When Edith entered Carmel, the question of w hether she would continue her scholarly work never cam e up. She wished two things: to give herself totally to God, and by so doing, to offer herself as a "willing victim" for the sins of her people58. She found that when she entered, she moved from the "height of a brilliant career into the depths of insignifi­cance"59. (Edith may well have recalled her kindergarten experience, perhaps reflecting upon the foundational virtue of the spiritual life, humility.) Adaptation to the life of the

55 Ibid., 119-24.56 This incident took place in April, 1933, prior to the signing o f the new

Concordat, and the German bishops' pastoral letter o f July 26, 1942 in which the churchmen spoke out concerning the plight o f the Jews. Reprisals against that let­ter cost Edith Stein her life. See Posselt 118, 203-05, 209.

57 Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein A Biography (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985), 64-65.

58 Graef, 112.59 Edith Stein, Life as quoted in Graef, 114.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 213com m unity would be a m ajor adjustm ent for anyone, but especially for someone of Edith's background and age60.

Edith's sister, Rosa, had wished to enter the church for sometime but had sacrificed her desire for the sake of her mother. Since E rau Stein had passed away61, she wished to see Edith and be baptized. Edith had an accident the night before her sister's arrival day, December 15. Edith ended up in the hospital recovering from a broken hand and Poot yet at the same time was able to instruct her sister Rosa for her Baptism62.

As the political s itua tion w orsened, E d ith 's Jew ish friends came to talk with her about emigration. They always left strengthened and consoled. As she told one of these visi­tors, she was well aware that the Nazis would probably come and take her from the enclosure. During this time, the young Carmelite had finished the work Finite and Eternal Being but was not optim istic about finding a publisher for a work written by a Jew. In the year 1938 she was able to make final vows. At Carmel, Edith was known as Sister Benedicta of the Cross. She was overjoyed after this turning point in her own life to hear that Husserl had turned back to God on his deathbed63.

While she was at the Carmel at Cologne, Edith began to reflect upon the relationship between the official liturgical prayer of the Church and the wordless prayer of the heart. She wrote in her article "The Prayer of the Church" that Christ is the model of one at prayer. One can only learn to speak with the Father through Christ. In later writings, she em phasized the relationship betw een the E ucharist and Christ's atoning sacrifice, the contributions of great women of prayer, the role of the spiritual director and also the place of mysticism in religious experience64.

Death was a subject which took an increasing prom i­nence in Edith's writings. While a t Cologne she w rote a friend:

60 Graef, 114.61 Frau Stein died on September 14, 1936, unreconciled to Edith's decision to

enter Carmel. See Herbstrith, 75.62 Graeft 166-67.63 Herbstrith, 75-78.64 Ibid., 86-93.

214 MADELEINE GRACE

Though we would certainly have a lot to tell each other if you came for another visit, the important thing is to stay united in prayer so that we can meet again in the light of eter­nity. Every time I see som eone go on ahead of me, my own yearning becomes all the greater65.E dith w rote M other Petra B runing, Superior o f the Ursu-

line S isters in D orsten , that she b e lieved the Lord had ac­cepted her life as an offering for all. E d ith did escap e from the C arm elite con ven t in C ologne u n d er th e cover o f n ight on N ew Year's Eve (D ecem b er 31, 1939) to the C arm elite convent o f E cht in H olland. For E dith how ever th is und er­cover journey m ust not be seen as flight. H er earlier corre­sp on d en ce bore testim o n y that sh e w ish ed to offer her life "as a sacrifice o f aton em en t for true peace." For her, there­fore, the journey w as an entrance in to the red eem in g action of Christ66.

T he fo llow in g year (1940) the G erm ans o ccu p ied H o l­land. As a resu lt o f the pastoral p rocla im ed b y the D utch b ish op s on July 26, 1942 p rotestin g the p ersecu tio n o f the Jew s, all non-A ryans w ere arrested in H olland on A ugust 2. W hen the SS m en cam e to p ick up S ister B en ed icta and her sister R osa at the C arm elite con ven t in E cht, the sisters protested , stating that they had a p assp ort for S ister B en e­d icta to Sw itzerland. The SS m en replied that if they did not turn them over im m ediately , her ow n sisters w ou ld suffer67. At the G estapo o ffice , E dith sa lu ted w ith "Praised be Jesus Christ." E dith and R osa broke the law by not w earin g the yellow star o f D avid on their ou ter garm ent. Several priests had urged her to escap e but she refused , fearing reprisal on her ow n sisters. E d ith and her sister R osa b oth d ied in the gas cham bers o f A uschw itz on A ugust 9, 194268.

W hile w orking in the grape harvests in the au tu m n of 1941, sim on e W eil first began to pray. H er com m en tary on the Lord's Prayer accom p an ies th is period in her life. In M ay o f 1942, S im one's parents asked her to accom p an y them to N ew York. She w anted to experience all the form s o f hum an bondage to dire n ecessity before she died , in c lu d in g the ex­

65 Edilh Stein as quoted by Herbstrith, 77.66 Herbstrith, 63, 92-95.67 Graef, 227.68 Fabregues, 125-31.

p erien ce o f prison . In N ew York, sh e b eca m e o b sessed w ith the p light o f the B lack s and sp en t m u ch tim e in H arlem . W hile in N ew York, sh e m et a n u m b er o f F ren ch m en w h o spoke against the V ichy governm ent's supporters. S h e had a d islik e for a govern m en t w h ich surrendered to H itler and prevented her from teach ing. S im on e's p arents rem ain ed in A m erica and she w en t to L ondon w here she w orked o n var­io u s w ritin g projects (the book The N eed fo r R o o ts in add i­tio n to a num ber o f essays) for four m on th s b efore b ein g ad m itted to the M iddlesex H osp ita l w ith p u lm on ary tuber­cu lo sis . S h e w rote her parents n o th in g o f her deteriorating health . S h e p assed aw ay on S ep tem b er 3, 1943, her death labeled "Strange Su icide. R efused to eat." S h e gave as a rea­son for not e a tin g -th e thought o f her people in F rance starv­ing69.

T hus, E d ith and S im o n e b oth gave th eir lives in total d ed ica tio n to w h at they b elieved in. Perhaps E dith 's w ork w h ich m ost v isib ly reflected her jou rn ey to A uschw itz is The Science o f the cross. She w rote it on the request o f her superi­ors on the four hundredth anniversary o f the death o f Saint John o f the Cross. The book w as not com p leted but d oes tell the s to iy o f a p h ilosop h er w ho has found the faith. S h e had analyzed the im age o f God in the sou l and had m en tion ed the th eo log ica l con cep t o f p erson in previous w orks. At the b egin n in g o f th is p iece, she seem s to have g iven a portrait o f her ow n soul.

If we speak of a Science of the Cross, this is not to be un­derstood in the ordinary meaning of science... It is indeed, known truth, a theology of the Cross, but it is living, actual and active truth: it is placed in the soul like a seed, strikes root and grows, giving the soul a certain character and forming it in all it does or leaves undone, so that its own being shines forth and is recognized in it. This form and force living in the depth of the soul nourish the philosophy of this man and the way in which God and the world present themselves to him, ana thus they can be expressed in a theory... The redemptive power raises to life those in whom the divine life had died through sin. This power had entered into the Word of the Cross, through which it penetrates to all who accept it without demanding signs or rational proof. In them it becom es that

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE WEIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 2 1 5

69 Rees, 68-84.

216 MADELEINE GRACE

formative, lifegiving power which we have called the Science of the Cross70.In the sam e work, E dith traces the m essage o f the Cross

from the Old T estam ent p rop h ecies to Saint Paul as seen by John o f the Cross. She then p roceed s w ith an analysis o f the w orks o f John o f the Cross, as th is th em e o f the Cross c o n ­tinues. She looks u p on John's "active night" as the "night o f the fo llow in g o f the Cross" and the p assive n igh t as "being crucified." [A scent o f M ount C arm el]1'. The w ork, as she left it, is d iv ided in to three parts: the m essa g e o f the C ross, the d octr in e o f the Cross and the fo llo w in g o f the Cross. Al­though she on ly had short sp an s o f tim e to w ork on it, and did not have proper referen ces at her d isp o sa l, it w a s her desire to grasp John o f the Cross at the root o f h is being. She did not fin ish the third part72, for her ow n fo llo w in g o f the Cross intervened.

A term w h ich S im o n e h igh ligh ted in several o f her w rit­ings, but esp eca illy her last is "malheur," affliction . S h e d e­scrib ed th is co n d itio n as "physical su ffer in g carried to the extrem e lim it, w ith o u t the slig h test c o n so la t io n ... a c c o m ­p an ied by utter and com p lete m oral distress"73. S h e v iew ed affliction as the essen tia l characteristic o f hu m an ex isten ce— sep aration from G od74. She b elieved that jo y co n ta in ed an equivalent p oten tia lity for en lightenm ent; how ever "the on ly tw o w ays are a ffliction and pure and extrem e joy; but a fflic­tion is Christ's way"75.

The Cross of Christ is the only source of light that is bright enough to illumine affliction. Wherever there is affliction in any age or any country, the Cross of Christ is the truth of it... Affliction without the Cross is hell, and God has not placed hell upon the earth76.

70 Edith Stein, Science o f the Cross A Study o f Saint John o f the Cross (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966), 1-10.

71 Graef, 213.72 Waultraut J. Stein, "Edith Stein, Twenty-Five Years Later", Spiritual Life 13

(Winter, 1967): 248-49.73 Simone Weil, Notebooks o f Sim one Weil, trans. Arthur Wills (New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons, 1956), 429.74 McFarland, 135.75 Simone Weil, Intuitions pre-chretiennes, quoted in Rees, Sim one Weil A Sketch

for a Portrait, 168.76 Simone Weil, "The Love o f God and Affliction", Gateway to God (New York:

Crossroads, 1982), 87.

EDITH STEIN AND SIMONE WEIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 217E arlier in th is sam e essay on "The Love o f G od and Af­

fliction", she com m en ted ,The man who sees someone in affliction and projects into him his own being brings to birth in him through love, at least for a moment, an existence apart from his affliction... To pro­ject one's being into an afflicted person is to assum e for a moment his affliction, it is to choose voluntarily som ething whose very essence consists in being im posed by constraint upon the unwilling. And that is an impossibility. Only Christ has done it. Only Christ and those men whose whole souls he possesses can do it77.

W hen she w as refused her ow n p lan o f action for her en ­tering in to the W ar, she w rote Joe B ou sq u et, a W orld W ar I veteran.

Fortunate are those in whom the affliction which enters their flesh is the same one that afflicts the world itself in their time. They have the opportunity and the function of knowing the truth of the world's affliction and contemplating its reality. And that is the redemptive function itself... But alas for those who have this function and do not fulfill it78.It is n otew orth y that S im on e u sed the w ord p o ssess io n

in c o n n e c t io n w ith h er o w n m y stic a l e x p e r ie n c e at S o lesm es. As sh e recou n ted , an E n g lish C atholic gave her G eorge H erbert's p oem "Love". S h e learned it by heart. Dur­ing on e o f th ese recitation s, "Christ H im self cam e dow n and took p o ssessio n o f me"79. D id S im on e perceive her ow n death as the m eans o f fu lfillin g her ow n "function", s in ce her w ill as denied?

M uch has been m ade o f S im o n e W eils refusal to accept B aptism in to the C atholic Church. S h e has been accu sed o f b ein g u n h istorica l, for she in clu d ed so m e o f her ow n "dis­cursive m ythologizing", and paid particu lar a tten tion to the pre-C hristian era as con ta in in g pure exam p les o f the Chris­tian spirit80. H er refusal to enter the Church has led others to b elieve sh e p o sse sse d in te llectu a l pride. T he m ea n in g S i­

77 Ibid., 84.78 Simone Weil, Seventy Letters (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 137-

38.79 Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 68-69.80 E.W.F. Tomlin, Sim one Weil (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1954), 38-

39.

218 MADELEINE GRACE

m on e has attached to the term "attente" is w orth y o f reflec­tion . She p erceived "attente" as active and co n tem p la tiv e . For S im one, it becam e a kind o f "transm uting activity."

In tiring God with our patience, we oblige him to trans­form time into eternity... A patience capable of thus wearying God proceeds from an infinite hum ility... By humility alone can we become perfect as our Father is perfect81.Yet, as she stated in her th ou gh ts con cern in g B aptism , if

sh e p o ssessed th is v irtue o f h u m ility , sh e w o u ld n ot have experienced th is general sen se o f in ad eq u acy82. For S im on e, "Humility is the refusal to ex ist ou tsid e God"83. S h e recorded in her fam iliar W aiting for G od that there cannot be a greater good on earth than to share in the su fferin gs o f Christ. She saw the Cross o f Christ as "our on ly hope"84. D esp ite her high ly original and so m etim es cr itic ized th ou gh ts, sim on e's se n s e o f in a d e q u a cy , a tte n te , a n d h er o w n m y stic a l exp erien ce have endeared her to m any. T he ex p ressio n o f the a u th en tic ity o f her o w n m y stic ism h as u n d o u b ted ly affirm ed that o f m any other readers.

The lives o f E dith S tein and S im on e W eil sh o w sim ilari­ties in background noted here, but the roads th ey traveled w h ich led to the u ltim ate m otivatin g forces for th eir ex is­tence w ere quite different. U ndoubtedly, each o f these figures m et at the foot o f the cross. T hey shared w ith Christ an em ­pathy for H is peop le . W hereas E dith's doctoral d isserta tion on em p ath y attem p ted to ap p roach the to p ic from every p o ssib le p h ilo so p h ica l p ersp ective, her co n v ersio n exp er i­en ce led her to em b od y w hat she orig inally approached as a graduate stu d en t85. R egardless o f w h eth er on e refers to the exp erien ce o f "givenness" p en n ed by the graduate stu d en t E dith or taking on the affliction s o f another, the great co n ­cern o f S im on e, each o f these w om en lon ged to be p o ssessed by God that their ow n acts m ight in so m e w ay b eco m e re­

81 Simone Weil, La connaissance surnaturelle quoted in Tomlin, 53-54.82 Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 46.83 Simone Weil, La pesanter et la grâce, quoted in Marie-Magdeleine Davy, The

M ysticism o f Sim one Weil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), 30.84 Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 127.85 Noel Dermot O'Donoghue, ed. The Way o f the Christian Mystics, 12 Edith Stein

Philosopher and M ystic by Josephine Koeppel, OCD (Collegeville, Minnesota: Michael Glazier / Liturgical Press, 1990) 184.

EDITH STEIN AND SIM ONE W EIL. A STUDY IN COMMITMENT 219dem ptive. Their "lifegiving power" w as truly the C ross. For Edith, it w as giving her life for the sins o f her peop le and for sim on e, taking on th e a fflic tio n s o f her fe llow F ren ch m en , im prisoned by the V ichy regim e.

E ach o f these figures presents a ch allen ge in con version , tran sform ation an d co m m itm e n t to the C ross o f C hrist. E dith S tein is certa in ly rem em b ered m ore for her life and S im o n e W eil for h er w r itin g s86, yet their d eed s and w ords have m et in a co m m o n thrust. If on e con sid ers E dith Stein 's w ish found w ritten on the back o f a p icture in her cell stating that she desired to give her life for the co n v ersio n o f the J ew s87 or the in terp retation o f S im o n e W eil p erceiv in g the C ross o f Christ as the m ea n s o f illu m in a tin g a ff lic t io n 88, each w om an drew her stren gth from the Cross. T here is m u ch to be learned about the m essage o f red em p tion from their lives and w ritings.

86 Neville Braybrooke, "Edith Stein and Simone Weil: Spiritual Heroes o f Our Times," American Ecclesiastical Review 163 (November 1970): 328.

87 Posselt, 211.88 Simone Weil, Gateway to God, 84.