How did Blaise Pascal argue that divine grace could overcome human misery?

In his work of Christian apologetics, the Pensées, Blaise Pascal argued that human beings exist in a state of profound contradiction, characterized as an "incomprehensible mixture of greatness and abjectness". He posited that without divine grace, humanity is incapable of reaching the supreme good to which its nature aspires, remaining trapped in a fallen state.1

Pascal maintained that this human wretchedness is explicable only as the effect of the Fall, a condition that philosophy and worldliness fail to address. He argued that humans can only be brought to God through Jesus Christ, who descended to assume the proportions of man's fallen state, thereby bridging the gap between the finite human and the infinite. For Pascal, the convergence of his psychological analyses of human misery with the historical facts of revelation serves as evidence of providence for the "anguished seeker after truth". Ultimately, he believed that a religion accounting for these inherent contradictions is the only one worthy of being "venerated and loved".1