Tonight in in 1654, Blaise Pascal (above), the French mathematician and philosopher, was profoundly converted through a direct experience of God. His experience lasted ‘from about ten-thirty in the evening to about half an hour after midnight’ on the feast of St Clement. He wrote about it on a piece of paper, headlined ‘Fire’, which he sewed into his coat. It seems that he always wore it next to him. Pascal never spoke of his night of fire to anyone, but the paper, known as the Memorial, was found after he died.
Fire
‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’ not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ…
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
Blaise Pascal, the Memorial
George Harrison’s song ‘My Sweet Lord’ saw its first release, in the United States, today in 1970. The song, where Harrison prays to see and be with the Lord, and complains that ‘it takes so long’ for that to happen, has a chorus of Hebrew hallelujahs, echoed by a chorus of Sanskrit Hare Krishnas. ‘My Sweet Lord’ apparently originated with Harrison wanting to write a Gospel song, and the final version has been described as a ‘Gospel incantation with a Vedic chant’.
It is the feast of St Clement, the third successor of St Peter as Pope of Rome. A long letter of his to the Church in Corinth is maybe the earliest Christian writing to survive outside the New Testament. On St Clement’s Day in 1700, Pope Clement XI took the chair of St Peter and became the first pontiff in 177 years to be clean shaven. No Pope has worn a beard since then.
Today is also the feast of St Alexander Nevsky, the Russian grand prince who protected 13th century Russia by being diplomatic towards the Tartars in the east, and warlike towards the Europeans in the west. In 1922, after the Russian Revolution, his relics were confiscated by the Bolsheviks and put into storage in a Museum of Religion and Atheism, but they were returned to the Church in 1989. His life was turned into a film, Alexander Nevsky (1938), by the director Sergei Eisenstein, with music by Sergei Prokofiev.
John Milton’s polemical pamphlet Areopagitica was published today in 1644 during the English Civil War. It is a passionate defence of freedom of speech, and for the right of people to judge ideas for themselves: ‘Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.’ Milton draws on the errors of Church history – such as the censorship of heretical books – and from the lives of Moses, David and Paul in making his case.
‘Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.’ John Milton, Areopagitica
Image: Jean Louis Mazieres / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0