Article May 22, 1920 Issue

The world continually attempts to smother spiritual...

The Christian Science Monitor

The world continually attempts to smother spiritual things in materiality and formalism. So it is with the experiences called fasting and the resurrection. Fasting cannot be restricted to forty days or to any particular kind of abstinence. And the resurrection must be participated in by every human being every moment of every hour until he has in truth risen from the dead beliefs of material existence. Then there will be found what always has been the only reality, the divine Mind and its expression. The resurrection is here and now for every man. When Martha at the grave of Lazarus would have postponed the rising from the dead until the "last day," Jesus corrected her and said, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The Master, of course, was here referring to the ever-present Christ, the activity of divine Principle. With this understanding of the truth about real existence, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead; that is, from his false belief in death as an actuality. Every one must be lifted above any belief of a power opposed to God. All must relinquish the sense of any being besides the eternal consciousness and its forever living reflection.

Jesus at the tomb was thus truly fasting. He abstained completely from all trust in matter as real, so that it could not impose upon him any assertion of a dead Lazarus. He totally surrendered every sense of material dying, just as he fasted, or gave up any sense of his own death on the cross, and brought about the resurrection. And in the same way, and with just as wonderful results, did Jesus fast from all other forms of the belief of matter. He gave no credence to them at all. All that meant anything to him was eternal Principle, or God, whom he knew to be the omnipotent creator of the true, spiritual man. This sort of fasting was revolutionary, but was no more of an innovation in his day, and was no more resisted by the flesh, than now. Mrs. Eddy writes of this on pages 52 and 53 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "The bigot, the debauchee, the hypocrite, called Jesus a glutton and a winebibber. They said: 'He casteth out devils through Beelzebub,' and is the 'friend of publicans and sinners.' The latter accusation was true, but not in their meaning. Jesus was no ascetic. He did not fast as did the Baptist's disciples; yet there never lived a man so far removed from appetites and passions as the Nazarene."

A fasting is an elimination of something. The eternal allness and oneness of Mind and its idea is the permanent elimination of all belief in matter as real. The world must acknowledge this verity and come to it. And in coming to its acknowledgment and the practicing of the truth contained in it, the true fasting will unfold to mankind increasingly and continuously. Withdrawing from the world, abstinence from passions and appetites, and the turning to God in greater measure will not then be a matter of forty days out of three hundred and sixty-five, but will be a matter of every moment throughout every man's career, until he has reached the point where, for him, the world and "all that is in the world" vanishes and the only substantial and true is found to be eternal Soul and its reflection.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

The world continually attempts to smother spiritual...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access