Editorial July 2, 1938 Issue

Communion

George Shaw Cook

Our beloved Leader wisely provided for semiannual communion services in the branch churches. (See Manual of The Mother Church, by Mary Baker Eddy, Art. XVIII, Sect. 2.) These services are held on the second Sundays of January and July, and they afford Christian Scientists added opportunity for communion with divine Principle, Love. The communion service includes no ritualism, and there is no use made of material symbols. It does, however, include a short period in which the congregation is invited to kneel in self-examination and in silent prayer, followed by the audible repetition of the Lord's Prayer. Writing of this observance in The Christian Science Journal of August, 1889, Mrs. Eddy says, "The sacrament shall be observed ... by a short interval of solemn and silent self-examination by each member as to his or her fitness to be called a follower of Christ, Truth."

Participants in the communion services in our churches go out from them refreshed, spiritually strengthened, and with increased desire better to put into practice that which true communion with God implies and involves. However, it is understood by Christian Scientists that communion in its highest sense is not periodic, but continuous. It means constant realization of spiritual man's oneness or unity with Mind, Spirit, God. And applying this thought of communion practically to daily human experience, Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 15): "We must 'pray without ceasing.' Such prayer is answered, in so far as we put our desires into practice. The Master's injunction is, that we pray in secret and let our lives attest our sincerity."

Jesus, according to the Gospels, frequently went apart to pray—to commune with his heavenly Father, divine Love. And our Leader, with high appreciation of the true import of his prayers, writes (ibid., p. 12), "It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth,—of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love."

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