Chaplain’s Corner: CLXXXIII
“Night of Fire”
There are child prodigies. And then there was Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623 in Rouen, France, Pascal was the son of a tax collector. By the time he turned 16, he had written a treatise on projective geometry that is still relevant four centuries later. He followed that up with work in probability theory and is commonly cited as one of the earliest inventors of mechanical calculators. If there was ever a kid destined to win the school science fair each year, it was Blaise Pascal.
Before he turned 30, he was making significant contributions in the fields of mathematics, physics, philosophy, literature, and invention. Then there was the question of God. Pascal had the wits and resources to undertake a full-on intellectual search for the meaning of life. But he consistently came up empty.
It was as if each philosopher drew a circle and said, “This is the nature of reality.” Then the next philosopher would come along, and erase the previous circle, and draw one of his own. “This is what truth looks like.” Pascal was singularly unimpressed. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, his heart seemed to warm. He became an ardent follower of Jesus. No one-not even those among his family and friends-knew precisely what had happened. When Pascal died at the young age of 39, a chance discovery helped resolve the mystery. A housekeeper who was handling his old coat found that a piece of paper had been sewn into the lining. It was in Pascal’s handwriting. He had never shown it to anyone. It reads like an entry into a diary-a private note about an astonishing personal experience:
“The year of grace 1654, Monday, November 23
From about ten-thirty in the Evening to about half an hour after Midnight.
FIRE.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac,
God of Jacob, not of the Philosophers and savants.
Certitude, certitude
Feeling joy, Peace.
God of Jesus Christ…
Thy God shall be my God. Forgetting the world and Everything, except God.
He is only found by the paths Taught by the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Just Father, the world has not
Known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, tears of joy.
May I never be separated from Him!”
What happened to Blaise Pascal that night?
He wasn’t touched by a mathematical theorem, philosophical paradigm or scientific treatise. Luke 3:16
tells us he will baptize us with “the Holy Spirit and fire.” The dry twigs of Pascal’s heart were seemingly
set ablaze by a baptism of fire.
Perhaps you’ve been on a spiritual search of your own. You’ve been hunting for an answer to a nagging
question or the resolution to a vexing issue, and no one seems to help. But what you’ve been looking
for, of course, is God. And maybe he’s the One you’ll find on the other side of a prayer that goes something like this: “Lord, kindle my heart with the fire of your love.”
Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain
