Editorial March 14, 1936 Issue

Prayer and Fasting

George Shaw Cook

A Little girl in a Christian Science Sunday School was asked by her teacher, "What is meant by prayer and fasting?" Her unhesitating reply was, "To pray is to think good thoughts, and to fast is not to think evil thoughts." Thus, with childlike simplicity, a profound truth was expressed. It was doubtless with similar thoughts in mind that Christ Jesus, after healing the epileptic boy whom his disciples had failed to heal, ended his reply to their questioning with, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

Refraining from thinking evil and allowing our consciousness to be filled only with good, we shall be demonstrating in our lives at all times, not only at fixed periods, the "feast of Soul and a famine of sense," which Mary Baker Eddy wished for the members of her household on Christmas Day, 1909. (See "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," p. 263.) However, neither this message from our Leader to her household nor anything else in her published writings seems to indicate that fasting—doing without material food or dispensing with certain kinds of food at stated periods—is requisite for growth in grace. On the contrary, the lesson to be drawn from her teachings is that material fasting does not forward the attainment of spirituality, and that regularly partaking of wholesome food, in moderation, does not retard spiritual growth.

Truly to fast, in season and out of season, is to refrain from entertaining those thoughts which are material, sensual, harmful, and degrading; to refuse as unreal and unworthy of acceptance the suggestions of dishonesty, deceit, hatred, jealousy, envy, greed, lust, avarice, fear, self-will, self-love, self-pity, self-righteousness—all the train of evil beliefs emanating from the carnal mind. And truly to pray is to welcome daily, hourly, and to abide with constantly, thoughts of truthfulness, sincerity, love, purity, contentment, completeness, satisfaction, spiritual joy, and peace, which emanate from divine Mind. The apostolic admonition is, "Pray without ceasing"; and on page 4 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our Leader has written, "The habitual struggle to be always good is unceasing prayer."

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