The Mad Prayer – Simone Weil

Father, in the name of Christ, grant me this.

That I may be unable to will any bodily movement, like a total paralytic. That I may be incapable of receiving any sensation, like someone who is completely blind, deaf, and deprived of all the senses. That I may be unable to make the slightest connection between two thoughts, even the simplest, like the total idiots who not only cannot read or count but have never learned to speak. That I may be insensible to every kind of grief and joy, and incapable of any love for any being or thing, and not even for myself like old people in the last stage of decrepitude.

Father, in the name of Christ, grant me all this in reality.

May this body move or be still, with perfect suppleness or rigidity, in continuous conformity with thy will.  May my powers of hearing, sight, taste, smell and touch register the perfectly accurate impress of thy creation.  May this mind, in fullest lucidity, connect all ideas in perfect conformity with thy truth.  May this sensibility experience, in their greatest possible experience, in their greatest possible intensity and in all their purity, all the nuances of grief and joy.

May all this love be an absolutely devouring flame of love of God by God. May all these things be stripped from me, devoured by God, transformed into Christ’s substance and given for food to afflicted men whose body and soul lack every kind of nourishment. And let me be a paralytic, blind, deaf, witless and utterly decrepit.

Father, bring about this transformation now, in the name of Christ; and even if I ask for it with an imperfect faith, grant this request as if it was pronounced with a perfect faith. Father, since thou art Good and I am mediocrity, rend this body and soul away from me to make them into things for your use and let nothing remain of me, forever, except this rending itself, or nothingness.