The Night Blaise Pascal Could Not Look Away

On the evening of November 23, 1654, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal sat alone in his room in Paris when something shattered his ordinary world. For two hours, beginning around half past ten, Pascal encountered the living God — not as an idea to be debated, but as a consuming fire that left him trembling and weeping. He later scribbled his experience on a scrap of parchment in broken, breathless phrases: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude. Joy. Peace. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God."

Like Isaiah standing in the temple as the hem of the Almighty's robe filled the room and the seraphim shook the doorposts with their cry of "Holy, holy, holy," Pascal found himself overwhelmed by a holiness that made all his brilliant achievements feel like ashes. The man who had mastered geometry and probability theory was utterly undone.

And like Isaiah, Pascal did not run. He sewed that parchment into the lining of his coat and carried it against his chest for the rest of his life — a hidden memorial of the night God's presence burned away his self-sufficiency. From that encounter forward, Pascal poured himself into defending the faith with the same passion Isaiah carried when he answered, "Here am I. Send me."

Every genuine encounter with the Holy One leaves us changed, commissioned, and unable to forget.