On this date in 1654, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal had a conversion experience, which led him to give up his study of science and devote himself to his newly rediscovered Christian faith. His explanation: “the Christian religion obliges us to live only for God, and to have no other aim than him.” On the night of his epiphany, Pascal wrote down what would later be called his “Memorial.” It seems that he then took this revelation and carried with him the rest of his life, and it was only discovered, quite by chance, by one of his servants after Pascal’s death. Here it is as translated into English:
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.
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Billy the Kid [William H Bonney], noted American outlaw and murderer was born today in 1860. He is the subject of two of my favorite pieces of music: Aaron Copeland’s ballet “Billy the Kid,” and Billy Joel’s song “The Ballard of Billy the Kid.”
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A man who scared me to death as a kid was born on this date in 1887. I am writing about the incomparable Boris Karloff (aka William H Pratt). There has never been a better Frankenstein.
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Romanian poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan was born today in 1920. His Poem “Tenebrae: is reprinted below.
Tenebrae
We are near, Lord, near and at hand. Handled already, Lord, clawed and clawing as though the body of each of us were your body, Lord. Pray, Lord, pray to us, we are near. Wind-awry we went there, went there to bend over hollow and ditch. To be watered we went there, Lord. It was blood, it was what you shed, Lord. It gleamed. It cast your image into our eyes, Lord. Our eyes and our mouths are open and empty, Lord. We have drunk, Lord. The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord. Pray, Lord. We are near.
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Verse for Today
Oh Lord, you have always been our home. Before the mountains were created, even before you formed the earth and the world, forever you are God. (Psalm 90:1-2, my paraphrase).
