But let a noise or scent, once heard or once smelt, be heard or smelt again in the present and at the same time in the past, real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, and immediately the permanent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated and our true self which seemed—had perhaps for long years seemed—to be dead but was not altogether dead, is awakened and reanimated as it receives the celestial nourishment that is brought to it. A minute freed from the order of time has re-created in us, to feel it, the man freed from the order of time. And one can understand that this man should have confidence in his joy, even if the simple taste of a madeleine does not seem logically to contain within it the reasons for this joy, one can understand that the word ‘death’ should have no meaning for him; situated outside time, why should he fear the future?
These words written by Marcel Proust, and proceeding from the mouth of the narrator, Marcel, in Time Regained, the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, may appear somewhat foreign to the proper concerns of Christian theology. The language as such is hardly alien, deploying as it does the imagery of Christian liturgy and mysticism: the awakening of what seems dead, the transcending of time, the overcoming of the fear of death—and all this through a form of ‘celestial nourishment’ first introduced into the narrative through the memory of the madeleine once tasted on Sunday mornings by the young Marcel before attending Mass.