Gloss on Pascal's Memorial

Pascal's most intimate religious work is the Memorial. This scrap of paper, which records Pascal's experience on one unforgettable night in 1654, was found in the lining of his coat after his death, for he carried this reminder about with him always.

Shining Cross. The Cross is light which radiates into all things and gives them their being, illuminates the hearts of men unto the knowledge of God.

The year of grace 1654. Not any year, but the year of grace - God in time, kairos.

Monday. Day of the Moon, reflection of the Sun, the light of the Cross reflecting on the heart of man.

St. Clement, Pope and Martyr. First Father of the Church. First Successor of St. Peter. Martyred by anchor, the seas recede every year to reveal the shrine of his bones. The anchor by its gravity brings us through the waters to the centre of the earth. This is hope, which leads us easily and speedily through the worries of this world towards our final end. The anchor is also the Cross over the Crescent, the victory of Christ over the sublunar, over Hell, which was accomplished also in the middle of the earth.

Vigil. Evening. Waking, keeping watch, in the night. Veille, veil, reveal. In the night which is this life those who wake pierce beyond the veil and light is revealed to their eyes.

St. Chrysogonos, Martyr. Of Golden Birth. Consolator of St. Anastasia. Beheaded, thrown into the waters, which spat him out to be buried. The bitter seas do not accept a prophet, the world hates the just.

And others. The communion of saints is ever present, each day, each moment.

From about 22:30 until about 00:30. In two hours is contained eternity. Midnight the completion of the day, the completion of the world. Silence of half an hour in judgment.

FIRE. The fire in the bush, the revelation of God's own name to Moses. The column of fire as a guide for the Israelites in the night. The fire that tests and purifies the metal. The fire on the holy mountain - the Glory of the Lord. The fire of the Wrath of God. The fire of the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles. The fire where Peter denied Christ. Etc.
Not the abstract God of the philosophers and scholars, perhaps not merely the God of the forefathers, but the God of Jesus Christ as Fire. Not merely fire as light as the scholars of this world amass their understanding, but fire as heat, the heat of love, which nowhere was stronger and greater and more alluring than in the voluntary humiliation of the most glorious, most lovely, most holy Person who is the Word of God in the form of the vile slave, the Suffering Servant.
God is Fire, and this fire is and was and always will be the same. Yet this same fire is enlightening to some, blinding to others. To one purifying, to another consuming. To one it warms, to another it burns. Heaven and Hell know only one fire, Boehme said, and this fire is only God, Who alone is and outside of Whom there is nothing.
Fire ignites all that is receptive that it touches. As long as there is material to burn the fire grows and grows until all existence is ablaze and nothing remains but ashes. Perhaps this is true greatness, to be on fire and to return to ashes - with the hope of the phoenix.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob. God in time - concrete God, existing God, God among men, God OF men.

Not of the philosophers and of the learned. God outside of time - abstract God, non-existent God, Epicurean God, otiose.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. Obscure Certitude of faith. Enlightened Certitude of knowledge. Feeling - affection, love of the known God. Joy in the sight of the Beloved. Peace in the embrace.

GOD of Jesus Christ. Extemporal God in time. Jesus as fire - light and heat, intellect and caritas, visible image of the obscure Father. Transmitter of His Holy Spirit, tongues of fire.

Deum meum et Deum vestrum. My God and your God. My God - Christ. Your God - the God of Christ. The Lord said to My Lord: Sit thou at my right hand: Until I make thy enemies thy footstool. Your God has become my God, let your God be my God. St. Augustine, He does not say, “Our Father.” But so He teaches us to pray. Aug. Therefore, in one way mine; in another way yours. My God under whom I am man; Your God, between whom and Himself I am mediator.

Your GOD will be my God. St. Damascene, Your Father by nature, My Father by grace. Ruth, Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD. Where God is I will dwell, and nowhere else is there where I could go. Not that my will is so rightly ordered towards God, but simply nothing truly is besides God. Forgetting the world and every thing (and God is no ‘thing’) is offering it up, returning it to its proper place, which is nowhere.

He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel. Men seek their good pleasure, God, in manifold things. But all the ways of men lead to naught, or better, lead in circles, samsara. Only the Evangelic path, which is Christ - Way, Truth, Life - brings us into the Trinitarian circle. Perichoresis - the Gothic triskelion.

Grandeur of the human soul. The ways taught in the Gospel - self-abasement, penance, mortification. Grandeur. What grandeur! The first the last and inverse. As above so below but inverse. An obscure mirror. The emptied soul, the soul who is nothing, is the most grand, for in its nothingness is its plenitude, or not its plenitude proper, but a plenitude much greater than he could fill himself.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you. Righteous Father, the Father of Christ is righteous, just and justice. But the world knows it not, knows no justice, for the just, the sons of the Father, the Son of the Father, are maligned and rejected. I have known you, Christ knew His Father most perfectly both as Man and as God. But His God, his Father, becomes our God, our Father in the measure that we become as Christ.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. Joy, the fruit of love. Tears, of penance, of love. Tears of embrace, a long lost friend, an abandoned father.

I have departed from him. Before the embrace, the departure. Sin, blindness, ignorance. Willful piggery, mind scattered as the feed. But in the saying: I have departed, in this saying already is contained the return. For the truly departed see not that they have departed, have forgotten their birthright, their honour, their former grandeur.

Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae. They, sinners, have forsaken Me, the fount of living water. Living water, not the waters of death which are damnation unto the unstable, but that water which refreshes the saints and gives them the Spirit. Aqua vitae - distilled spirit, quintessence, prana. Drunkenness of the soul. But they have dug their own cisterns, and filled them with their own water, which is death.

My God, will you leave me? No. But I have departed from him.

Let me not be separated from him forever. Hell.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ. The knowledge of God, not the dry knowledge, but the wet knowledge, the knowledge of tears, is salvation. Salvation, salt, the wetted salt, liquid salt, frozen fire.

Jesus Christ. Once.

Jesus Christ. Twice. Not thrice repeated.

I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified. The third. Once confessed, twice confessed, third denied, triply denied. Nescio. Non novi. O homo, non sum. I don’t know, I don’t know Him, O man, I am not. See, the denial of knowledge, the denial of knowledge of God, the denial of the self. But not the productive self-denial, but rather the destructive denial. God is fled, renounced, crucified by the pride of the soul, and so the soul in its willed fullness loses its unwilled greatness and grandeur. O weak soul, which may not speak the last Sanctus!

Let me never be separated from him. First - let me not be separated from Him forever. Now - let me never be separated from Him. First, the fear of Hell, the fear of rejection in the end. Now, the fear of sin itself, of the slightest straying from the Way, the fear of hurting the Beloved in any manner.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel. First - He is only found. Now - He is only kept. First - the searching for God, the active will itself which relies on its own power to find God. Now - the keeping of God, the passive will which is led by God and receives from God as long as it is safely guarded from all disordered intents and acts. Thus the ways of the Gospel teach first selfish fear and active seeking, then loving fear and passive being found.

Renunciation, total and sweet. Here is the Way of the Gospel. Total renunciation of all things, abandonment of all unto God. Abandonment of the self, abandonment of all the things the self seeks and has sought. Total, for nothing is like God, nothing can be equated with God, nothing can be compared to God, nothing can be worth striving after but God. Sweet, for there is no one more lovable, more delectable, more enjoyable than Christ.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. Total renunciation of the will means complete submission. To Jesus Christ, that is both to the teaching of Christ as in the Scriptures, as to the living Christ in the figure of the spiritual director, who must be treated as Christ Himself by the directed. For Scripture had said, “He will be your mouth, and you will be to him as God.”

Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on the earth. Eternity in two hours, eternity gained for but a moment. What is two hours compared to eighty years? What is eighty years compared to eternity? A day of exercise on earth. A day’s travel home.

Non obliviscar sermones tuos. I will not forget your words. This is all the exercise for the day, to not forget the way home, the directions taught in the words of God.

Amen. Truly, that is, what has been said is true and certain.

Shining Cross. How it begins is how it ends, the alpha and the omega, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world and the centre of the Heavenly Jerusalem descending at the worlds consummation. All things come from the Cross and return to the Cross, as the rays come and go from the Sun, as rivers return to their source, as a dog returns to its vomit.