Scribbled Notes: Pascal’s Illumination at the Cross

We are commemorating this month the tercentenary of the death of Blaise Pascal.

Pascal said in his Pensées that the last thing we discover when writing a book, is what to put first. After having devoted some 380 pages to the consideration of the emergence of Pascal’s genius (Pascal: The Emergence of Genius, with an appendix on recent research, Harper Torchbook No. 82, paperback), I came to the sudden realization that, with due respect for the scientific achievements of adolescence and youth, the great divide along the Pascalian quest for truth was marked by a unique experience at the Cross. Only after he had surrendered to that Love which, according to Dante, “moves the sun and the other stars,” did Blaise apprehend in its fullness the truth, the living truth, truth to be done. Only then did the landscape of God’s reality begin to make sense.

In order to secure a glimpse of understanding into this miracle—for a miracle it truly was—let us freely recall that before his ultimate surrender to the Crucified and Living Lord, this amazing genius had, within 15 years, completed the circle of human sciences. At the age of 16, he had produced a treatise on conic sections which had laid down the groundwork for projective geometry. At the age our young people become concerned about College entrance examinations, he had invented and constructed the calculating machine. Having then turned to physics, he had demonstrated the phenomena of atmospheric pressure, brought to naught one of the greatest errors of ancient physics, invented the barometer and the hydraulic press, and formulated with perfect rigor the essentials of scientific methodology. Soon thereafter, during his so-called wordly period, he had given full status to the intuitive function of the mind. Being taken to the gambling table by his new friends had provided him with the opportunity of originating the calculus of probabilities. And yet he remained at sea about the human situation, about what we commonly call the meaning of it all. Hence this uneasiness known as the anguish of Pascal.

What lends so much power to Pascal’s thoughts on what he called “the misery of man without God,” is that he himself experienced that misery during his worldly period. It was then that he confessed to being in “a great abandonment on the side of God.” The total impact of this experience was one of “fear and trembling,” as dramatically expressed in the anguished outcry, “The eternal silence of those infinite spaces frightens me,” perhaps the greatest free verse in world literature in the original French. What kind of a place was this universe? He then could only view it with quiet desperation. “For, I ask, what is man in nature? A nothing compared with the infinite, an all compared with nothing, a mean between nothing and all. Infinitely unable to grasp the extremes, the end of things and their principle are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; for he is equally incapable to see the nothing whence he springs, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.” Worse yet, just as he is hemmed in between everything and nothing, his human infirmity condemns him to perceive but “the appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal despair of ever knowing either their principle or their end.” Indeed it is at this point that the misery of his pitiable state is laid bare, one of inconsistency, feebleness, corruption, malignity. He is at the mercy of the most deceptive powers, be they imagination, vanity, ennui, pride, self-love, sickness, or any form of blindness. A sense of futility attends his vain efforts at reading the script of his own life.

And yet, the paradox is that his is actually aware of his own misery. He thinks. He desires the good. He loves truth and he loves glory. The fact is, he cannot bear to be despised. Just as there is in him an agonizing anguish at the feeling of being thrown out in the midst of those dumb, and dark, and frightfully infinite spaces, there is an aching anguish of revolt against the unbearable implication of such a lot. A lump chokes his throat, and causes him to set his face against the baleful decree. All this notwithstanding, the measure of human anguish is not yet full. For at the very moment the man without God, weary of conjecture, gropes for some kind of stable certainty, he realizes that time is growing short. Death may be near. The wind of eternity strikes his face. What is the meaning of all this for him? Is there a meaning to it at all. Is there, anywhere, any ultimate sure foundation? Any sense to this striving which does not seem to achieve anything final? What kind of place, this universe? What is a man to do in the situation? These, our questions, are now asked in a minor key. In the words of Pascal:

“We sail over a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever adrift, carried to and fro. Whatever point we think to fix and fasten ourselves to, shifts and leaves us; and if we pursue it, it escapes our grasp, slips away, fleeing in eternal flight. Nothing stays for us. This is our condition, natural, yet most contrary to our inclination; we have a burning desire to find a sure resting place, and a final fixed basis whereon to build a tower rising to the Infinite; but our whole foundation cracks, and the earth yawns to the abyss.”

The Light of the Bush

At this dark hour of his quest for truth, Pascal turned to the Bible. He opened it at the beginning of John 17 where Jesus is shown preparing himself for his sacrifice on the Cross. Having given up all inclination to struggle, or the slightest pretense to a power he might call his own, he groped for Jesus in order to watch with him. And all of a sudden, during the night of November 23, 1654, his room was flooded by the very light of the bush, that burned and did not burn out. A divine message came to him which he feverishly scribbled on a slip of paper. He afterwards copied the text of this revelation on a parchment which was discovered only after his death, sewn in the lining of his coat. The original slip of paper has been preserved among his manuscripts, at the National Library in Paris. This is the way it begins:

“In the year of grace, 1654, on Monday, 23rd of November.… From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve,

Fire

“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.

“Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

“God of Jesus Christ.… “Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.

“He is to be found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.…

“Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.…” Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will not surpass such heights.

Soon after this heavenly vision, Pascal went for a retreat to Port Royal, an institution of a fundamentally biblical character. There, with his brethren in the faith, the Jansenists, he was invited to direct his thoughts towards the mystery of the death of our Lord. The moment, the hallowed moment, came, when he actually heard the Crucified speak to him:

“Console thyself; thou wouldst not be seeking me, had thou not already found me.

“I was thinking of thee in my agony; I have shed such and such drops of blood for thee.…”

Pascal then fell on his knees at the foot of the Cross with the words of utter commitment:

“Lord, I give thee all.”

Calvary the Great Divide

It is as fascinating as profoundly moving, to realize how Calvary marked the great Divide along the path of Pascal’s quest for truth. Henceforth, the genial penitent was given the power to see through the misery of man without God, as well as through the contradictions of the philosophers throughout the ages. His eye beheld the landscape of creation with singleness of purpose, as necessity was laid upon him to enter the lists against the Jesuits, in defense of the Jansenists. Thus his Provincial Letters written in a thoroughly biblical vein, have taken their place as one of the classics of Christian ethics. As a great work of art too. For what is a work of art, if not truth in a beautiful garb? Indeed the Provincial Letters turned out to be the first masterpiece of modern French prose. They moulded that genuine eloquence which makes light of eloquence, in this case, the noble language that Racine and Bossuet were to speak; they gave Molière the model for the most perfect form of wit, and to theologians the model for the most powerful reasoning. Again, the illumination of his mind made of him one of the first Christian laymen. In this capacity, his biblical approach to the cure of soul proved admirable. One immediate reason for this is not far to seek: we only know that which we are. By then, Pascal had become a saint! He practiced those everyday virtues which are the edification of genuine piety. The proud, haughty man of old, had become as humble and submissive as a child. Now a simple penitent, he knew that God owed him nothing but chastisement, and that the slightest good received from on high was by pure grace.

Not that his genius had lost any of its power. One night when he had a violent toothache, he solved the mathematics of the cycloid, which had defeated the specialists since the days of Galileo. Yet he refused to take credit for this achievement, having since the night of the Memorial given up the use of his name. Let us further mention another example of what utter commitment on Calvary can do to illuminate a man’s whole being—mind, soul, and spirit. Shortly before his death, Pascal was standing on his crutches at a street corner in Paris. They had a traffic problem in those days. As he watched people hurry by in all sorts of vehicles, Pascal asked: Why don’t people who go in the same direction travel together? To make a long story short, he “invented” the bus, and organized the first bus company. Whereupon he asked for an advance on his share to send the money to the poor of the Blois region who had suffered from a bitter winter. He loved the poor because Jesus loved them. He wanted to die among them. This privilege having been denied him, he opened his own home to a destitute family. The children of these needy people having been taken ill with smallpox, he refused to let them go. He turned over his house to that family, and went to die in the house of his brother-in-law (August 19, 1662). He was only 39.

The stray bits of paper on which he had scribbled notes in view of a vindication of Christianity, were found in his drawers after his death, with only a beginning of classification. All together, they constitute an unfinished symphony which pertains as much to God as to man. They are now available as one of the truly great books under the title, Pensées—Thoughts.

Once the Crucified and Living Lord has enabled a man to answer with a divine simplicity, his questions, “What kind of place am I in?”, and “What should I do in the situation?”, not only does this man’s mind become illuminated, but his whole being becomes Christ-like. Indeed the ultimate outcome of such a God-inspired quest for truth is the elaboration of character in the most beautiful meaning of the word—that of a Christ-like effigy deep within. And this is holiness. As the Protestant thinker, Alexandre Vinet, feelingly pointed out, it is good that such vocations, such souls as Pascal’s should exist; it is upon such over-abundance of spiritual life that the Christianity of us all is nourished.

EMILE CAILLIET

Princeton, New Jersey

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