Part 2: Night of Fire

Introduction

Blaise Pascal: 17th-century child prodigy, mathematician, infinitesimal calculus, cycloid, conic sections, scientist, vacuum, atmospheric pressure, physics, inventor of the first mechanical computer, omnibus service, father of modern philosophy, probability theory, French literary language. Together, these words and phrases suggest genius. For the first 31 years of his brief life, Pascal was, as Morris Bishop described him, “one of the greatest men that has ever lived.” In 1654, after a life of astonishing accomplishments, he experienced a night of illumination, a transformational event which dramatically changed and guided him for the remaining eight years of his life. What did he experience, and how are we to understand it today?

Chronology

1646 Pascal finds God (first conversion)

1646 Pascal begins experiments on the vacuum in the fall; publishes first work on the vacuum

1647 Pascal returns to Paris; meets the philosopher Descartes

1647 Blaise and Jacqueline begin ties with Port Royal

1649 Family moves back to Clermont-Ferrand

1651 Etienne Pascal dies on September 24 at the age of 63; Blaise is 28

1651 Jacqueline’s first retreat at Port-Royal-des-Champs, November 2-5

1652 Jacqueline enters the convent on January 4

1654 Pascal’s two-hour encounter with God and conversion, November 23; The Ecstasy

Pascal’s Worldly Period

• Blaise was very pious in the early spring of 1648, and very sick from March to September.

• During the fall and winter of 1648-1649, war was going on in Paris. “Social life must have been disorganized and precarious” (Bishop).

• Etienne, Blaise, and Jacqueline moved to Clermont in May, 1649.• Jacqueline and Blaise parted ways – she moving toward the convent

at Port Royal and he toward the world.• Pascal was engaged with social discourse, gaming, and “diverting

himself to pass the time.”

Pascal’s Worldly Period

• Etienne, Blaise, and Jacqueline returned to Paris in September, 1650; Blaise was 28. Blaise’s worldly period runs from 1649 to 1654.

• Blaise began to learn “dice and cards” (gambling) and spent more time with wealthy and famous members of society, “his entrance into the world of elegance.”

• His letters reveal his “scientific touchiness, his intellectual irascibility.”• Etienne died on September 24, 1651, at the age of 63.• Blaise opposed Jacqueline’s entering the convent at Port Royal.• She “left the world” in January, 1652, when she was 26, and made her

solemn vesture on May 26, 1652.

Pascal’s Worldly Period

• With Jacqueline’s entrance into the convent, the “household censor” was removed.

• “For a year from the autumn of 1651, he could indulge to the full his new pleasure in society’s diversions. This life was interrupted, from October, 1652, to May, 1653, by a visit to Clermont, undertaken, perhaps, for economy’s sake. Again from May until December, he was free to make the most of Parisian pleasures.”

• “One may suppose that he passed the first half of the year (1654) in alternations of worldliness and revulsion from it.”

• Gilberte: “It was the time of his life that was worst employed.”

Pensées

• “Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so” (47/172).

• “It is good to be tired and weary from fruitlessly seeking the true good, so that one can stretch out one’s arms to the Redeemer” (631/422).

Pensées

“One needs no great sublimity of soul to realize that in this life there is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are mere vanity, that our afflictions are infinite, and finally that death which threatens us at every moment must in a few years infallibly face us with the inescapable and appalling alternative of being annihilated or wretched throughout eternity” (427/194)

God-Shaped Vacuum

Incorrectly Attributed to Pascal: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”Actual Quote: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” (148/428).

The Night of FireMonday, November 23, 1654

That night, Pascal’s life was divided in two.

What Happened That Night?

Morris Bishop reports: “On that night God came, in fire, and talked to Pascal for the space of two hours. By the grace of that night Pascal was delivered from the bondage of corruption; he put off the old man of flesh and put on the new man of righteousness. He emerged from the fire of that night another creature, assured that he had actually been born again. This new self was sent to the school of the soul; the old self, the Pascal that the world knew, was contemptuously thrown to the world’s middens (dunghills or garbage heaps).”

Pascal’s Memorial

• A few days after Pascal’s death in 1662, a male servant was arranging his clothes and noticed a curious bulge in his doublet (coat).

• He opened the lining and retrieved a folded parchment along with a folded piece of paper.

• Pascal recorded what had happened on the evening of November 23, 1654, and sewed them within the lining of his doublet.

• The folded paper contains the original notes of Pascal’s experience, while the parchment was his permanent, copied record. Charles I in a Doublet

Two Copies of the Memorials

First Draft of the Memorial Louis Perier’s copy from the scroll

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Pascal’s Memorial: Krailsheimer Translation

The year of grace 1654.Monday, 23 November, feast of Saint Clement, Pope

and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology.Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others.From about half past ten in the evening until

about half past midnight.FIRE

‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.’Not of philosophers and scholars.

Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.

Pascal’s Memorial

God of Jesus Christ.God of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.‘Your God will be my God.’

The world forgotten, and everything except God.He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.

Greatness of the human soul.‘O righteous Father, the world had not known thee,

but I have known thee.’

Pascal’s Memorial

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.I have cut myself off from him.

They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.‘My God, wilt thou forsake me?’

Let me not be cut off from him for ever!‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and

Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.’Jesus Christ.Jesus Christ.

Pascal’s Memorial

I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him.

Let me never be cut off from him!He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Sweet and total renunciation.The last three lines of the Memorial are absent in one of the autographs.

Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.Everlasting joy in return for one day’s effort on earth.

I will not forget thy word. Amen.

Os Guinness on Pascal’s Night of Fire

“Most of us cannot begin to understand Pascal’s mathematical accomplishments, and we would not wish to experience the pain and suffering of his short life. But what lit and fanned into a blaze the deep potential of his character and gifts is something open to us all – the call of God. The call came to Pascal so deeply that he became a man consumed by a divine fire that touched his life and work.”

Os Guinness1941 -

Eight Scriptures in the Memorial

1. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob: “And he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’” (Ex. 3:6).

2. My God and your God: “Jesus said to her [Mary Magdalene], ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”’” (Jn. 20:17).

3. Your God will be my God: “But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Eight Scriptures in the Memorial

4. O Righteous Father, the world had not known thee, but I have known Thee: “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me” (Jn. 17:25).

5. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters: “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13).

6. My God, wilt thou forsake me? “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mt. 27:46).

Eight Scriptures in the Memorial

7. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn. 17:3).

8. I will not forget thy word: “I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word” (Ps. 119:16).

Peter Kreeft on Pascal’s Memorial

“Christ is our God. Experience is not our God. Contemporary theopsychobabble substitutes experience for Christ, pop psychology for revealed religion. Yet we need to experience Christ, meet Christ, touch Christ, not just believe correct theology about Christ. What we need is not experience without Christ, nor Christ without experience, but the Peter Kreeft, PhD

Philosophy Professor, Boston College

Peter Kreeft on Pascal’s Memorial

experience of Christ; not psychology or theology but religion, lived relationship.We do not all need, or get, the same experience of Christ. But we all need, and get, the same Christ. Pascal’s experience of Christ was a special divine gift. Yet in many ways it is a universal, and not just a singular and quirky, Christian experience. The godly ‘fire,’ the joy, the tears, the concreteness and specificity and definiteness of Pascal’s experience as recorded in the ‘Memorial’ (no. 913) are for all.”

Surprised by Joy

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

C.S. Lewis1898-1963

Surprised by Joy

I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

Chuck Colson’s Story

“As I drove out of Tom’s driveway, the tears were flowing uncontrollably. There were no street lights, no moonlight. The car headlights were flooding illumination before my eyes, but I was crying so hard it was like trying to swim underwater. I pulled to the side of the road not more than a hundred yards from the entrance to Tom’s driveway, the tires sinking into soft mounds of pine needles. I remember hoping that Tom and Gert wouldn’t hear my sobbing, the only sound other than the chirping of crickets

Chuck Colson1931 -2012

Chuck Colson’s Story

that penetrated the still of the night. With my face cupped in my hands, head leaning forward against the wheel, I forgot about machismo, about pretenses, about fears of being weak. And as I did, I began to experience a wonderful feeling of being released. Then came the strange sensation that water was not only running down my cheeks, but surging through my whole body as well, cleansing and cooling as it went. They weren’t tears of sadness and remorse, nor of joy – but somehow, tears of relief….I stayed there in the car, wet-eyed, praying, thinking, for perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer, alone in the quiet of the dark night. Yet for the first time in my life I was not alone at all.”

Who Imparts Spiritual Knowledge?

• “And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Barjonas, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven’” (Mt. 16:17).

• “Mortal men are capable of imparting the knowledge of human arts and sciences, and skill in temporal affairs. God is the author of such knowledge by those means: flesh and blood is employed as the mediate or second cause of it: he conveys it by the power and influence of natural means. But this spiritual knowledge spoken of in the text, is what God is the author of, and none else: he reveals it, and flesh and blood reveals it not. He imparts this knowledge immediately, not making use of any intermediate causes, as he does in other knowledge” (Jonathan Edwards).

Spiritual & Divine Light

• In this spiritual light, there is “a true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of God and Jesus Christ, and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel….He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it, or has a sense of it. He does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.”

• “There is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace.”

Spiritual & Divine Light

• “The mind being sensible of the excellency of divine objects, dwells upon them with delight; and the powers of the soul are more awakened and enlivened to employ themselves in the contemplation of them, and exert themselves more fully and much more to purpose.”

• “When there is an actual and lively discovery of this beauty and excellency, it will not allow of any such thought as that it is the fruit of men’s invention….They believe the doctrines of God’s word to be divine, because they see a divine, and transcendent, and most evidently distinguishing glory in them.”

Spiritual & Divine Light

• “God, in letting in this light into the soul, deals with man according to his nature, and makes use of his rational faculties. But yet this light is not the less immediately from God for that; the faculties are made use of as the subject, and not as the cause. As the use we make of our eyes in beholding various objects, when the sun arises, is not the cause of the light that discovers those objects to us.”

• “This light is the ‘light of the glorious gospel of Christ’” (II Cor. 4:4).• “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind

blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is every one who is born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:7-8).

“Pascal is by no means a one-work celebrity, but the Pensées at once crown and illuminate the rest of his life and work.”

- A.J. Krailsheimer