Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
Interpretation
Grace can only fill moments of lack or emptiness, creating the space needed for its presence.
In this quote, Simone Weil suggests that grace is something that fills the voids in our lives, but it requires those voids to exist in the first place. The concept of grace itself creates the emptiness that allows for a deeper appreciation and acceptance of it, highlighting the interplay between absence and presence in human experience.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming challenges, one might refer to this quote to emphasize that difficulties can lead to moments of grace.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.
I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
One can't believe impossible things.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.