The Grandeur of Man

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“The grandeur and misery of man are both central to the thought and enduring message of Blaise Pascal, born four centuries ago in 1623 in Clermont in central France.*

“From childhood, Pascal devoted his life to the pursuit of truth. By the use of reason, he sought its traces in fields of mathematics, geometry, physics, and philosophy, making remarkable discoveries and attaining great fame even at an early age.

“But he was not content with those achievements. In a century of great advances in many fields of science, accompanied by a growing spirit of philosophical and religious skepticism, Blaise Pascal proved to be a tireless seeker of truth, a ‘restless’ spirit, open to ever new and greater horizons.

“Pascal’s brilliant and inquisitive mind never ceased to ponder the question, ancient yet ever new, that wells up in the human heart, expressed in the Psalms as: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?’ (Ps. 8:4).

“This question has perplexed men and women of every time and place, every culture, language, and religion. Pascal asks: ‘What is man in nature? Nothing with respect to the infinite, yet everything with respect to nothing’ (Blaise Pascal, Pensées).

“The question had been posed by the Psalmist in the context of the history of love between God and his people, a history culminating in the incarnation of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, whom the Father gave up to forsakenness in order to crown him with glory and honor above every creature.

“To this question, raised in a language so different from that of mathematics and geometry, Pascal continued to devote his attention.

“….it is fitting to describe Pascal as a man marked by a fundamental attitude of awe and openness to all reality. Openness to other dimensions of knowledge and life, openness to others, openness to society. In 1661, he developed, in Paris, the first public transport system in history.

“This detail makes it clear that neither his conversion to Christ—which began with the ‘night of fire,’ as he described, on the 23rd of November 1654—nor his masterful intellectual defense of the Christian faith, made him any less a man of his time. He continued to be concerned with the questions that troubled his age and with the material needs of all the members of the society in which he lived” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Sublimitas et miseria hominis, June 19, 2023).

An awful lot of these ideas have a lot of relevance in what the teaching of the Second Vatican Council has to tell us about the role of the ordinary Christian layperson in the middle of the world.

“This openness to the world around him kept him concerned for others even in his final illness, at only 39 years of age.

“In the last stage of his earthly pilgrimage, he is reported to have said: ‘If the physicians tell the truth, and God grants that I recover from this sickness, I am resolved to have no other work or occupation for the rest of my life except to serve the poor’ (Gilberte Perier, La Vie de Monsieur Pascal).

“It is [moving to realize] that in the last days of his life, so great a genius as Pascal saw nothing more pressing than the need to devote his energies to works of mercy. He said: ‘The sole object of Scripture is charity’“(Blaise Pascal, ibid., Pope Francis, ibid.).

You could say that it is timely “to pay homage to Pascal, and to recall those aspects of his life and thought that [I deem] helpful to encourage Christians in our day, and their contemporaries of good will, in the pursuit of authentic happiness. Because, as he said: ‘All people seek to be happy. This is true without exception, whatever the different means that people employ. All tend to this end.’

“Four centuries after his birth, Pascal remains our traveling companion, accompanying our quest for true happiness and, through the gift of faith, our humble and joyful recognition of the crucified and risen Lord” (Pascal, ibid.).

Pascal has a message for everyone. “Above all, [he can attract everyone] because he spoke so convincingly of [our] human condition. But it would be mistaken to see him merely as an insightful observer of human behavior. His greatest work called Pensées (Thoughts), some of whose individual statements remain famous, cannot really be understood unless we realize that Christ and Sacred Scripture are both their center and key to their understanding.

“Because if Pascal proposed to speak of man and God, it was because he had arrived at the certainty that ‘not only do we know God solely through Jesus Christ, but we know ourselves solely through Christ. We do not know life and death except through Christ. Apart from Christ, we understand neither our life nor our death, neither God nor ourselves. Hence, without the Scriptures, which speak solely of Christ, we know nothing and we see only darkness’ (Pascal, ibid.).

“If this daring statement is to be understood by all, and not considered just a purely dogmatic assertion incomprehensible to those who do not share the Church’s faith, or a disparagement of the legitimate scope of natural reason, it needs to be clarified.

“As Christians, we need to avoid the temptation to present our faith as an incontestable certainty, evident to everyone. Pascal was concerned to make people realize that ‘God and truth are inseparable’ (Blaise Pascal, Entretien avec M. de Saci sur Épictète et Montaigne), yet he also knew that belief is possible only by the grace of God, embraced by a heart that is free.

“Through faith, he had personally encountered ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, not the God of the philosophers and the learned’ (Pascal, Pensées, Mémorial), and he had acknowledged Jesus Christ as ‘the way, and the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6).

“…everyone who wishes to persevere in seeking truth—an unending task in this life—could do well to listen to Pascal, a man of special intelligence, who insisted that apart from the aspiration to love, no truth is worthwhile’” (Pope Francis, ibid.).

Pascal said: “We make truth itself into an idol, for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image; it is an idol which must in no way be loved or worshiped” (Pascal, Pensées, Le Mystère de Jésus).

“In this way, Pascal would shield us from false teachings, superstitions, and libertinism that avert so many people from the lasting peace and joy of the One who desires that we should choose ‘life and good,’ not ‘death and evil,’ as said in the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 30:15,19).

“Yet the tragedy of this life is that sometimes we fail to see clearly, and as a result, we choose poorly. Because we cannot savor the joy of the Gospel unless ‘the Holy Spirit fills us with his power and frees us from our weakness, our selfishness, our complacency, and our pride’ (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et exsultate, Point 65). What is more, ‘without the wisdom of discernment, we can become prey to every passing trend’ (ibid., Point 167).

“That is why an appreciation of the living faith of Pascal, who sought to demonstrate that the Christian religion is ‘venerable because it truly knows man’ and ‘lovable because it promises true good’ (Pascal, Pensées), can help us to make our way through the shadows and sorrows of this world.

“When his mother died in 1626, Pascal was three years old. His father, Étienne, a well-known jurist, was also renowned for his notable scientific gifts, particularly in the field of mathematics and geometry. Choosing to provide personally for the education of his three children—Jacqueline, Blaise, and Gilberte—he moved to Paris in 1632.

“Blaise quickly showed exceptional intelligence and persistence in seeking truth. His sister Gilberte says that ‘from childhood, he could only accept things that struck him as evidently true; and as a result, when not provided with good reasons, he sought them for himself’ (Gilberte Perier, La Vie de Monsieur Pascal).

“One day, his father found Blaise studying geometry and suddenly realized that without knowing that the same theorems could be found in books under other names, Blaise, at age twelve, entirely on his own, by drawing figures on the ground, had demonstrated the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid’ (cf. ibid.). She recalled that their father was ‘astounded at the depth and power of his intellect’ (ibid.).

“In the years that followed, Pascal worked intensely to make his immense talent bear fruit. At seventeen, he was in communication with the most learned men of his time. In quick succession came his discoveries and publications. In 1642, at the age of nineteen, he invented an arithmetic machine, the ancestor of our modern computers.

“In this way, Pascal also speaks to our own times. He reminds us of the grandeur of human reason and encourages us to employ it in understanding the mysteries of the world around us” (Pope Francis, ibid.).

We live in a culture where often we are told that we are so close to the animals. Man is brought down lower to the level of the animals, and often the animals are elevated to the same level as human persons.

But people like Pascal remind us of the grandeur of the human person, the grandeur of man, the grandeur of woman, the grandeur of the family. These are central aspects of the social teaching of the Catholic Church.

“His [grasp of] mathematics and his ability to understand in detail how things work would prove very helpful to him throughout his life. In the words of one commentator: ‘He trained himself in the precision appropriate to mathematics and natural science as such, so as to attain that quite other precision appropriate to the realm of being and to the Christian realm’ (Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume III).

“Pascal’s confidence in the use of natural reason, which unites him to all seekers of truth, enabled him both to acknowledge its limits and to be receptive to the supernatural reasons of divine revelation, with that sense of paradox that was to find expression in the philosophical depth and literary charm of his Pensées—his Thoughts: ‘The Church expended as much effort in demonstrating that Jesus Christ was man against those who denied this, as she did in demonstrating that he was God; and both were equally evident’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Many of Pascal’s writings are steeped in the language of philosophy. This is especially true of his Pensées, the collection of fragments published posthumously, that are his notes and sketches for a philosophy inspired by a theological concern. Scholars have attempted, with varying results, to restore the collection’s original form and unity.

“Pascal’s passionate love for Christ and for serving the poor were not so much the sign of a disconnect in the mind of this bold disciple, as of a deeper growth towards evangelical radicalism, a progression, aided by grace, towards the living truth of the Lord.

“Pascal, who possessed the supernatural certitude of faith and considered it fully compatible with reason while infinitely surpassing the latter, sought as much as possible to engage in dialogue with those who did not share his faith. For ‘to those who do not have faith,’ he said, ‘we cannot give it except by reasoning, while we wait for God to give it to them by moving their heart’” (Pascal, Pensées).

“Here we see a completely respectful and patient form of evangelization that our generation would do well to imitate.

“It is necessary then, for a proper understanding of Pascal’s thinking on Christianity, to be attentive to his philosophy. He admired the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosophers, who sought with simplicity and tranquility to live well as citizens of a polis, a state.

“He said, ‘We think of Plato and Aristotle as wearing the flowing robes of scholars. They were normal people, like everyone else, who enjoyed a good laugh with their friends. While they were composing their Laws and Politics, they did it for pleasure. It was the least philosophical and least serious part of their life; the most philosophical part was to live simply and peaceably’ (ibid.).

“Yet for all their greatness and their usefulness, Pascal recognized the limits of those philosophies. ‘Stoicism leads to pride,’ he said (Blaise Pascal, Entretien avec M. de Saci sur Épictète et Montaigne); ‘skepticism to despair’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Human reason is a marvel of creation, which sets man apart from all other creatures. He said: ‘Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, yet he is a thinking reed’ (ibid.).

“The limits of the philosophers are, quite simply, the limits of created reason. Democritus might well say, ‘I am going to speak about everything,’ but reason cannot, of itself, resolve the deepest and most urgent issues.

“In the end, both for the age of Pascal as well as for our own, what remains the greatest and most pressing question? It is that of the overall meaning of our destiny, our life, and our hope, which is directed to a happiness that we are not forbidden to imagine as eternal, and which God alone can grant. ‘Nothing is as important to man as his own state,’ he said, ‘nothing to him is as fearsome as eternity’ (ibid.).

“In reflecting on Pascal’s Pensées, we constantly encounter, in one way or another, this fundamental principle: ‘reality is superior to ideas.’ Pascal teaches us to keep our distance from ‘various means of masking reality,’ from ‘angelic forms of purity’ to ‘intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom’ (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, Point 231, November 24, 2013). ‘Nothing,’ Pascal said, ‘is more dangerous than disembodied reason: He who would act as an angel acts as a beast’ (Pascal,Pensées).

“The baneful ideologies from which we continue to suffer in the areas of economics, social life, anthropology, and morality, keep their followers imprisoned in a world of illusions, where ideas have replaced reality.

“Pascal’s philosophy, ever paradoxical, is grounded in an approach as simple as it is lucid. It seeks to attain to ‘reality illumined by reason’ (Pope Francis, ibid., Point 232).

“He starts by observing that man is in some way a stranger to himself; at once great and wretched. Great by virtue of his reason and his ability to master his passions, but great too ‘in that he acknowledges himself as wretched’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Indeed, man aspires to something other than satisfying or resisting his instincts, ‘for what is nature to animals, we call wretchedness in man’ (ibid.).

“An intolerable disproportion exists between, on the one hand, our limitless desire for happiness and knowledge of truth, and, on the other, our limited reason and physical frailty, which ultimately ends in death.

“Pascal’s strength is also his relentless realism. ‘It does not take great intelligence,’ he says, ‘to realize that here below there is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are but vanity, that our ills are infinite, and that death, which threatens us constantly, will infallibly set before us, in a few years, the dread alternative of being annihilated or of being unhappy for all eternity. Nothing is more real than that, nor more frightening. We can act as bravely as we like: this is the end that awaits the finest life in the world,’ he said (ibid.)

“In this tragic condition, surely an individual cannot retreat into himself, for his wretchedness and the uncertainty of his destiny prove unbearable to him. As a result, he needs to distract himself.

“Pascal readily acknowledged this: ‘Hence it is,’ he says, ‘that men so greatly love noise and commotion’ (ibid.). Because if a person does not divert himself from his condition—and we know very well how to divert ourselves through work, forms of leisure, relationships in family or among friends, but also, alas, by the vices to which certain passions lead—his humanity experiences ‘its nothingness, its abandonment, its insufficiency, its dependence, its powerlessness, its emptiness. There emerge from the depths of his soul melancholy, sadness, chagrin, despair’ (ibid.).

“Diversion fails to satisfy, much less fulfill, our great desire for life and happiness. This is something that all of us know quite well.

“At this point, Pascal sets forth his great argument. ‘What is it, then, that this longing and this feeling of helplessness cry out to us, if not that man once enjoyed a true happiness, of which there now remains but an empty trace that he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things he lacks what he cannot obtain from those he has. Yet none of these can provide it, for this infinite abyss cannot be bridged except by an infinite and immutable object, which is God himself’ (ibid.).

“If man is like ‘a dispossessed king’ (ibid.), seeking only to recover his lost grandeur while knowing that he is incapable of doing so, then what is he? ‘What a fantastic creature is man, a novelty, a monstrosity, chaotic, contradictory, prodigious, judge of all things, feeble earthworm, bearer of truth, mire of uncertainty and error, glory and refuse of the universe! Who can undo this tangle?’ (ibid.).

“As a philosopher, Pascal saw clearly that ‘the greater our intelligence, the more we discover man’s greatness and his baseness’ (ibid.), [and that] these contradictions are irreconcilable. Human reason cannot make them agree, nor resolve the enigma.

“Pascal [goes] on to argue that if there is a God, and if man has received a divine revelation—as a number of religions profess—and if that revelation is true, it must contain the answer we await in order to resolve the contradictions that cause us such anguish. ‘The greatness and wretchedness of man are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us both that there is in man a great principle of grandeur and a great principle of wretchedness. It must also account for these astonishing contradictions’ (ibid.).

“From his study of the great religions, Pascal concludes that ‘no thought and no ascetic-mystical practice can offer a way of redemption,’ unless by ‘the higher criterion of truth found in the illumination of grace’ (Hans Urs von Balthasar, op. cit.).

“‘It is in vain,’ Pascal [writes], imagining what the true God might tell us, ‘that you seek in yourselves the remedy for your miseries. All your intelligence could only attain the knowledge that is not in yourselves that you will find either truth or goodness. The philosophers promised it to you and they were unable to deliver. They know neither what is your true good, nor your veritable state’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“After applying his extraordinary intelligence to the study of the human condition, the Sacred Scriptures, and the Church’s tradition, Pascal now presents himself with childlike simplicity as a humble witness of the Gospel. As a Christian, he wishes to speak of Jesus Christ to those who have hastily concluded that there is no solid reason to believe in the truths of Christianity.

“For his part, he knows from experience that the content of divine revelation is not only not opposed to the demands of reason, but offers the amazing response that no philosophy could ever attain on its own” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Sublimitas et miseria hominis).

“As St. John Paul II noted in his encyclical on…faith and reason, Fides et ratio, ‘philosophers such as Pascal’ are outstanding for their rejection of all presumption, as well as for their stance on humility and courage. They came to realize that ‘faith liberates reason from presumption’ (John Paul II, Encyclical, Fides et ratio, Point 76, September 14, 1998).

“Prior to the ‘night of fire,’ as Pascal describes his moment of conversion, he ‘never doubted the existence of God. He also knew that God was the supreme good. … What he lacked and longed for was not knowledge but power; not truth but strength’ (Henri Gouhier, Blaise Pascal: Commentaires).

“That strength was now bestowed on him by grace, and he felt himself drawn with certitude and joy to Jesus Christ: ‘We know God,’ he said, ‘only through Jesus Christ. Without this mediator, all communication with God is taken away’ (Blaise Pascal, Pensées).

“To discover Christ is to discover the Savior and Liberator whom I need. ‘This God is nothing other than the Redeemer of our miseries. Thus we can only really know God by knowing our iniquities’ (ibid.).

“As with every authentic conversion, the conversion of Pascal took place in humility, which delivers us ‘from our narrowness and self-absorption’ (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, Point 8).

“The vast and restless intelligence of Pascal, brimming with peace and joy at the revelation of Christ, invites us, following the ‘order of the heart’ (Pascal, cf. Pensées), to advance towards the brightness of ‘these heavenly lights,’ as he said.

“For if our God is a ‘hidden God’ (Isa. 45:15), it is because he ‘willed to conceal himself’ (Pascal, Pensées) in such a way that our reason, illumined by grace, will never stop seeking to find him. Hence, it is by the illumination of grace that we come to know him.

“Yet our human freedom must be open to this. Indeed, Jesus comforts us with the words: ‘You would not seek me if you had not found me’ (ibid.).

“Pope Benedict XVI said, ‘The Catholic tradition from the beginning has rejected what is called fideism, which is the desire to believe against reason’ (Benedict XVI, General Audience, November 21, 2012).

“Pascal is likewise deeply attached to the ‘reasonableness of faith in God,’ not only because ‘the mind cannot be forced to believe what it knows to be false,’ but also because ‘if we contradict the principles of reason, our religion would be absurd and ridiculous’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Yet while faith is reasonable, it remains a gift of God and may not be imposed. ‘We do not prove that we should be loved by setting out the reasons why; that would be ridiculous,’ Pascal tells us with his subtle humor, comparing human love and the way that God beckons us.

“Like human love, ‘which proposes but never imposes, the love of God never imposes itself’ (Pope Francis, Homily, November 20, 2022).

“Jesus bore witness to the truth (cf. John 18:37), but ‘refused to use force to impose it on those who speak out against it’ (Vatican II, Dignitatis humanae, Point 11, December 7, 1965).

“That is why ‘there is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those disposed otherwise’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Pascal goes on to say that ‘faith differs from proof. One is human, while the other is God’s gift.’ Hence, it is impossible to believe ‘unless God inclines the heart.’ Although faith is of a higher order than reason, it does not follow that faith is opposed to reason; rather, faith infinitely surpasses reason.

“In reading Pascal’s work, we do not first encounter reason that clarifies faith, but a Christian of great logical rigor accounting for an order, graciously established by God, which transcends reason: ‘The infinite distance between bodies and minds represents the infinitely more infinite distance between minds and charity, because the latter is supernatural’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“As a scientific expert in geometry, the science of bodies’ position in space, and a mathematician expert in philosophy, the science of minds positioned in history, Pascal, enlightened by the grace of faith, could sum up his whole experience in the words: ‘From all bodies put together, one could not succeed in producing a tiny thought. That is impossible and of another order. From all bodies and minds, one could not draw an impulse of true charity. That is impossible and of another, supernatural order’ (ibid.).

“Neither the operations of geometry nor philosophical reasoning permit us, of themselves, to arrive at a ‘very clear view’ of the world or of ourselves. Those enmeshed in the details of their calculations do not benefit from the view of the whole that enables us to ‘see all the principles.’ That is the task of the ‘spirit of finesse’ which Pascal extols, for in attempting to grasp reality, ‘one must immediately take things in at a single glance’ (ibid.).

“This intuitive vision has to do with what Pascal calls the ‘heart.’ ‘We know the truth not only by reason, but even more by the heart; it is by the latter that we come to know the first principles, and it is in vain that reasoning, which has no part in it, tries to refute them’ (ibid.).

“Divinely revealed truths—such as the fact that the God who created us is Love, that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that he became incarnate in Jesus Christ, who died and rose for our salvation—are not demonstrable by reason. They can only be known by the certitude of faith, and then pass immediately from the spiritual heart to the rational mind, which acknowledges their truth and can explicate them in turn. ‘This is why those to whom God has given religious faith by moving their hearts are blessed indeed and rightly convinced,’ he says (ibid.).

“Pascal never grew resigned to the fact that some men and women not only do not know Christ, but disdain, out of laziness or due to their passions, to take the Gospel seriously. For in Jesus Christ, their very lives are at stake. ‘The immortality of the soul is so important to us, something that touches us so deeply, that we need to have lost all feeling to be unconcerned with knowing what is at stake. … That is why, among those who are not convinced about this, I would distinguish clearly between those who make an effort to investigate it, and those who go about their lives without being concerned about it or thinking of it’ (ibid.).

“We know very well that often we attempt to flee death, or to overcome it, thinking that we can ‘banish the thought of our finite existence’ or ‘remove its power and dispel fear. But Christian faith is not a way of exorcising the fear of death; rather, it helps us to face death. Sooner or later, we will all pass through that door. … The true light that illumines the mystery of death comes from the resurrection of Christ’ (Pope Francis, General Audience, February 9, 2022). Only God’s grace enables the human heart to know God and to live a life of charity.

“This led an important commentator on Pascal in our own day to write that ‘thought does not become Christian unless it attains to that which Jesus Christ brought about, which is charity’ (Jean-Luc Marion, La métaphysique et après).

“At the conclusion of [a life that] was brief yet extraordinarily rich and fruitful, Pascal set the love of his brothers and sisters above everything else. He felt and knew that he was a member of one body, for ‘God, having made the heaven and the earth which are not conscious of the happiness of their existence, wished to create beings who would know that happiness, and constitute a body of thinking members’ (Pascal, Pensées).

“Pascal, as a Christian layman, savored the joy of the Gospel, with which the Spirit wishes to heal and make fruitful ‘every aspect of humanity’ and to bring ‘all men and women together at table in God’s kingdom’ (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, Point 237).

“When, in 1659, he composed his magnificent Prayer to Ask of God the Proper Use of Sickness, Pascal was a man of peace, no longer engaged in controversies or even apologetics. Gravely ill and at the point of dying, he asked to receive Holy Communion, but that was not immediately possible.

“So he asked his sister, ‘since I cannot communicate in the head [Jesus Christ], I would like to communicate in the members.’ He ‘greatly desired to die in the company of the poor’ (Gilberte Perier, La Vie de Monsieur Pascal).

“It was said of Pascal, shortly after he took his last breath on the 19th of August, 1662, that ‘he died with the simplicity of a child.’ After receiving the sacraments, his last words were: ‘May God never abandon me’” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Sublimitas et miseria hominis).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

*Note: This meditation draws extensively from Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Sublimitas et miseria hominis dated June 19, 2023, marking the fourth centenary of the birth of Blaise Pascal.