'There is no pain in Truth'

Cristina Helena de Toledo Rocha

Originally written in Portuguese, this testimony first appeared in the February 2014 Portuguese, French, German, and Spanish editions of The Herald of Christian Science.

One day, a year and a half ago, I woke up with severe tooth pain. The pain was so strong that I could not eat or even think with clarity.

I called a Christian Science practitioner to help me through prayer. I explained what I thought was at the root of the problem. During a recent visit to the dentist, he’d taken X-rays and concluded that I had an impacted wisdom tooth. He’d explained that it could cause inflammation and strong pain at some point if I didn’t have it extracted.

The practitioner reminded me of this passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “There is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; …” (p. 113 ). Understanding that the painful sensation was illusive calmed the fear I was feeling.

During our conversation, the practitioner used the analogy of the sun and its rays. She explained that just as the rays share the sun’s nature of warmth and light, all children of God share God’s nature because we are all created by Him. Because God is Spirit, our real nature is not material but spiritual.

The practitioner also mentioned this Bible passage: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31 ). Then she explained to me that God’s creation contains no error. Therefore, the only and true diagnosis of all the children of God includes the continuous presence of health and good. She continued by saying that the dentist’s diagnosis was a material one, and didn’t reveal the truth about my being, which is spiritual and perfect, in the likeness of God.

She asked me, “If you were never born in matter, and never stopped being spiritual, in what moment could conditions that result in a material diagnosis have appeared?” I smiled because I recognized that this situation was just an opportunity for me to deny a material and false sense of pain, and establish in my thought the divine truth about all the children of God, including me.

When I hung up the phone, I was already able to reason more clearly and from a spiritual standpoint. I focused my prayer mainly on the ideas from this passage, which the practitioner had also shared with me: “Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness” (Science and Health, p. 162 ).

I realized that through prayer our thought is uplifted and changes from a material to a spiritual basis, causing us to understand that our being is spiritual, harmonious, and never includes pain.

As I cherished these thoughts during the day, at some point the pain disappeared. During dinner that night I was able to eat normally and painlessly. I did not have the tooth extracted, and it has never again caused me any pain.

This experience proved to me that in divine reality there is nothing capable of causing us to suffer.

Cristina Helena de Toledo Rocha
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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