S imone W eil and the Theo‐Poetics of Compassion

S imone W eil's writings suggest that human compassion is divinely revelatory to the extent that interpersonal union and estrangement intensify identically and simultaneously. The relational space of compassionate communion is aporetic; the more attuned one becomes to an afflicted other, the more unreachable this other is seen to be. In her uniquely poetic style of writing, W eil locates perhaps the most intense experience of G od directly in the center of this aporia. Compassion between two people—a sufferer and an empathizer—becomes a locus of divine manifestation as it instantiates the (im)possible distance and oneness of C reation, I ncarnation, and C ross.