Happy Easter, 2022 – “It is finished”.
Excerpt below from the APRIL 7, 1928 ISSUE of the Christian Science Sentinel
“It is finished”
FANNY DE GROOT HASTINGS
When on the cross Jesus uttered the words, “It is finished,” he voiced no sense of the ending of his life, but rather, as John says, the “knowing that all things were now accomplished.”
A dictionary gives “to complete” as one of the definitions of the verb “to finish;” as another, “to bestow the last required labor upon;” and as yet another, “to perfect.” Christ Jesus, the great Way-shower, was undoubtedly conscious of having bestowed the last requisite work upon his problem, in knowing for himself and all humanity the truth of eternal Life; and he could therefore say, “It is finished,” even in the face of seeming failure, and three days prior to his victory in the resurrection.
It was the constant, unshaken knowledge of Jesus of the completeness of creation, of the perfection here and now of all true being, which earlier enabled him at the marriage feast to order that wine be poured from vessels previously filled with water; to invite the five thousand to sit down even before the loaves and fishes had been multiplied; and to give thanks before, not after, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. “Jesus restored Lazarus by the understanding that Lazarus had never died, not by an admission that his body had died and then lived again,” writes Mrs. Eddy on page 75 of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” the textbook of Christian Science.
As Christian Scientists we need to realize, as did Jesus, that the work of God is finished; that we have to change or alter nothing real, in order to bring harmony into our experience. The humble opening of our consciousness, with gratitude, to the fact that God’s work is perfect, complete, finished, and willingness to rest with divine Principle in this understanding, assures demonstration. Mrs. Eddy writes in “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany” (p. 242), “Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom.”
