It might be an odd choice for Lenten writing: a book by a Jewish thinker, a woman who spent a significant amount of her life under the banner of “radical leftist.” Yet in later life, Simone Weil came as close to converting to Catholicism as one can without actually crossing the line.

Born in France in 1909, Weil studied philosophy before doing the fairly typical leftist “live like the proletariat masses” move. It’s easy to slight that, to suggest that because she had an upper-middle class family to return to it somehow invalidated her effort. Yet reading Weil’s later work and knowing how she died, I’d suggest it was genuine.

For a while, early in World War Two, she stayed on the farm of Gustave Thibon, a philosopher and farmer. It was due to this time spent on the farm that we even have any writings from Weil: when she left for America in 1942, she left a satchel of notebooks with Thibon for editing. She later wrote a letter that informed him that, if he didn’t hear from her for three or four years, he should consider the contents of the manuscripts his own. He didn’t hear from her, and after editing the manuscripts, he published them as Gravity and Grace.

For 40 Things this year — I am trying it yet again — I will be sharing passages from Gravity and Grace (one of the most remarkable books I’ve read) and the thoughts they prompted.