Pascal's Memorial

"The heart has reasons of its own, of which reason knows nothing."

Kreeft's amazing Companion to the Pensées

Blaise Pascal is one of my favorite philosophers.  His Pensées or Thoughts are beautiful pearls of wisdom that he never was able to string into a book.  Yet after his death the thoughts were combined in a fashion echoing Wisdom literature (especially Proverbs and Sirach).  I love the aphorisms, the little meditations, the thoughts we all let slip by day by day.  These are seminal thoughts are small splatterings of ink that give away to oceans of insight or, if you will, ponds of ponderings.  These are also great, because people don't remember treatises or essays, but they do remember proverbs, poems, aphorisms, etc.  and because we think aphoristically (small insights > laid-out treatments) the Pensées hit humans how we naturally think.

Pascal's Pensées and the Book of Ecclesiastes are great reading partners and its incredible how much wisdom comes out of the thought that "all of life is vanities and chasing after wind" (Ecc 1:14).  There is a definite poetic quality of Pascal's Pensées in their depth, brevity and construction, which is especially clear in his Memorial.  Pascal was a deeply religious man and this obscure and intriguing fragment was found sewn in his jacket after his death.  So enjoy and then go read Ecclesiastes and the Pensées . . .

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The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.