Article March 24, 1923 Issue

The Chosen Fast

HARRIET KATE HELMAN GRAY

During the Lenten season the Christian Scientist is sometimes asked the question, "What do you deny yourself during Lent?" or, "How do you observe Easter?" The writer will try to answer this query briefly, keeping clearly in thought that it is not for the purpose of belittling or deriding our neighbor's mode of worship, but rather to elucidate our own.

The custom of abstaining from certain foods as an evidence of devotion to God is not a new one. There are records of fasts in the Old Testament, as far back as the time of Moses, who went without food forty days and nights while he received the Ten Commandments on the tables of stone. Also, in Leviticus we read that the Israelites were instructed to eat "neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears," after reaping the harvest, till they had made the customary thank-offering to God. Fasting can be traced down through religious history to modern times, when we still find the Jewish people giving up leavened bread at one fast; while converts to other beliefs eat no meat at certain seasons.

This age-old thought of abstinence has its place in the Christian Scientist's religion; but his understanding of abstaining differs from the older religious custom, even as his concept of God differs from the older concepts of God. Each individual worships or does not worship God according to his concept of God. The Christian Scientist understands that God is good, and All. It is quite impossible for him to conceive of God bestowing more of His presence or favor upon eaters of fish than of flesh! To the Scientist the substance or vital part of a fast is the denial of a false sense of self, and of all that is unlike God, who is omnipotent good. A moment's reflection will show that this denial must include all those numerous phases of unloveliness which appear to him as sin, sickness, death, sorrow, poverty, friction, discord. His fast, or days of denial, then, cannot be limited to forty days, or to any one season of the year; rather, it must continue day after day throughout the years. It is a constant struggle with false material selfhood, from which he must not waver; for he is keeping his fast, not only for his own sake, but to help heal and save mankind.

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