Vatican City, Jun 3, 2020 / 05:00 am
Pope Francis pointed to an experience of 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal as an important testimony of how one can sense the living presence of God in personal prayer.
The pope called a small handwritten note that was discovered sewn into Pascal's coat at the time of his death "one of the most original texts in the history of spirituality."
"It begins thus," Pope Francis said. "'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.'"
Pope Francis said June 3 that in these lines from Pascal's "Memorial," the philosopher "expresses not an intellectual reflection that a wise man like him could conceive of God, but the living, experienced sense of his presence."