Church of the Holy Cross, New York City

Church of the Holy Cross, New York City, referred to in the book as Corpus Christi Church or Corpus Christi Catholic Church, is linked to the developing religious lives of Simone Weil and Thomas Merton. During Weil’s wartime stay in New York, she attended Mass there daily; Merton went there for instruction as he considered conversion to Catholicism. These accounts make the church a setting for distinct, closely situated acts of religious practice and commitment.

Identification and Setting

The narrative identifies the church by the names Corpus Christi Church and Corpus Christi Catholic Church. It places the church on 121st Street and describes it as next to Columbia’s campus. The book associates it with two different periods of spiritual change rather than treating it as the subject of an extended history or description.

Simone Weil During the War

On May 17, 1942, Weil and her family sailed for the United States and took an apartment on Riverside Drive in New York. Weil found American life too secure while France suffered under Nazism and war, and she wanted to return to serve the resistance. During this period of displacement and frustration, she attended daily Mass at Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street. The account places this repeated religious practice alongside her awareness of the suffering she had left behind; it does not describe her attendance as resolving that tension.

Thomas Merton’s Instruction

Merton walked to Corpus Christi Catholic Church, next to the Columbia campus, and took instruction as he began to consider conversion. He had arrived at that decision through reflection and several hesitations, without anyone pushing him toward it. He understood baptism as the beginning, not the completion, of a spiritual life, and the book notes that he did not yet know how difficult that life’s journey would be. The church thus appears in his account at the threshold of a commitment he regarded as a beginning.

Significance in the Narrative

The church connects two accounts without making their circumstances interchangeable. Weil’s daily attendance took place after her family’s departure from France and amid her wish to return; Merton’s instruction belonged to his gradual movement toward conversion. In both cases, the church is presented through concrete religious practice—regular Mass for Weil, instruction for Merton—rather than through architectural detail. Its significance in the book rests on these separate episodes and the different turns in spiritual life they mark.