You are invited to Worship with Holy Communion on April 6 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.
You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441 Meeting ID: 965 881 6441
You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.
Fifth Sunday in Lent
with Holy Communion
Sunday, April 6, 2025, 10 am
Children’s Time “Being an Everyday Mystic” Pastor John
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~ Mary Oliver
Message Numinous Mystical Fire: Rev. John Song
Part 3) “Blaise Pascal’s Night of Fire”
Blaise Pascal was the French 17th-century philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and famous for the collection of fragments in, The Pensées, which was published in 1670.
On, November 23, 1654, Pascal’s horses bolted and plunged off a bridge. Pascal was thrown into the roadway. He saw this as a warning directly from God. That night he encountered numinous mystical fire of God that would cause his outstanding scientific work to take second place in his pursuits to serve God.
For the rest of his life Pascal carried around a piece of parchment sewn into his coat–a parchment that inscribed his experience of the divine encounter. Light flooded his room. He saw fire, all-consuming fire. He recognized Jesus, the Word.
After his death, eight years later, at the age 39 (on August 19, 1662, Paris), a servant going through his effects felt a lump in the interior lining of his coat. Investigating, he found written on a parchment worn but carefully preserved paper in Pascal’s own handwriting of the record of his fateful night of encountering the numinous Light of God on November 23, 1654.
Pascal wrote down a summary of the experience the divine visitation of the “Night of Fire” in a brief document entitled the Memorial, which he sewed into his coat that touched his heart and carried with him until his death.
Here are excerpts from his ecstatic phrases:
FIRE
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob
Not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ…
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of Joy,
I have separated myself from Him
My God, wilt Thou leave me?
Let me not be separated from Thee.
This is the eternal life,
that they might know Thee,
the only true God,
and the one whom Thou has sent, Jesus Christ”
Renunciation, total and sweet
Submission, total and sweet
Total submission to Jesus-Christ… Eternally in joy…
Amen.
From that day forward, Blaise Pascal realized even more deeply that he must live primarily in service for God.
Exodus 3:1-6
The Burning Bush
“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Not Light but Fire
“But if you wish to know these things come about
Ask desire, not understanding
The groaning of prayer, not diligent reading
The Lover, not the teacher
Not light, but the fire
That totally inflames and carries us into God.”
~ St. Bonaventure
