"Celebrate" means to hold up for acclaim.
Christian Science acclaims the everpresence and goodness of God. It shows us how to experience God's ever-present good daily through the spiritualization of our thoughts and lives.
Spiritualized thought results in the healing of men and nations, proof to us of divine Love's omnipresence. It causes us to perceive something of the absolute, spiritual nature of all being.
Any celebration by us on the side of progress, good, and truth can inspire mankind, because improved experience is determined by our thought. But a human sense of celebration—like a human sense of God and man—has its limits, because everything human appears as a mixture of the finite material and the infinite divine. The benefits of refreshing ourselves at the source-spring of pure spirituality, explained by Christian Science, can be greater strength, more consistency, and more effective ability to heal.
For example, mankind through thousands of years has begged God for blessings and held festivals to invoke or celebrate His bounty. But mankind's prayers of petition and acts of invocation have tended, in effect, to base themselves on a belief in the momentary absence of God, Spirit. Christian Science shows that what blessings come to us come only to the degree that we acclaim God's presence alone.
So Christian Science acknowledges God's supreme and complete allness—the already perfect nature of spiritual reality. Scientific prayer celebrates His present omnipresence and our inseparability from Him.
Christian Science rejects any suggestion of God's absence from us, however temporary. It even rejects the notion that God must be called upon by our plea in order for Him to be present and active, either on the individual or national scene.
God, Spirit, doesn't come and go. His work is accomplished in ever-active, all-varied, infinitely individualized, spiritual life and perfection.
What appears as a special benefit satisfying our specific human need isn't that at all. The apparent special blessing—be it national, organizational, familial, mental, or physical healing—is simply a yielding of material thought so that God's action is seen more clearly than ever before to be ever present. We perceive more fully something of God's infinite and infinitely varied divine reality.
In other words, healing and progress occur when the human mind, individually or collectively, yields some of its self-centeredness to Spirit, God, the one Mind. But the impelling action of all progress is always ever-present divine Principle—not special pleading.
Healing and progress hinge, then, not on human conditions and political revolutions but on God's omniperfection. Christ Jesus implies this: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48; In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal." Science and Health, p. 260.
Does God really know about this healing? Does He know about the founding and betterment of people and nations? To the degree that progress is material or physical, no. To the degree that purely spiritual activity has occurred, yes. God is spiritually all-knowing and all-acting, and all spiritual activity is His knowing.
To infinite Spirit, the omnipresent Mind of perfection, the aspect of our life and experience that's oppressive, sinful, physical, or material is unreal—not divinely created. God doesn't know what's unknowable because unreal. In truth, we—as spiritual man, God's expression—also don't know or affirm the unreal; therefore spiritually we can't evince any need for individual healing or national emancipation of some sort. God only is causative, and He never causes oppression or disease for anyone. The spiritual man is already entirely free.
To humans—apparent mixtures of the spiritual and material, health and disease, normality and abnormality—genuine healing and progress are the consequence of lessening false beliefs. When human consciousness yields to the divine Mind, God—celebrates His presence—we experience healing in the flesh and in the body politic, which are the embodiment of human thinking. To our spiritual natures, perfection with its perfect activity is always known.
Are you concerrned about your own or your country's progress? Do ghetto life and limitation disturb you? Do you feel you're alone, pulling more than your own weight in trying to better family or community conditions?
Mortal concepts of restricted positions, unhappy places, and squalid localities contrast with the one, divine fact of God's omnipresence. But the divine fact realized impels healing: the electorate may support a progressive measure, or the right individual may be placed in high office, or a broken bone may move into its proper place, or growths may be moved off.
When we say, from the human point of view, that healing and progress of this nature have occurred, what's the significance, speaking from a more scientific point of view?
What really happened was that human thought yielded to a fuller sense of the omnipresence, perfection, and eternality of God and His expression, spiritual man, who includes all right ideas and qualities. Perhaps divine activity was acclaimed ever present where the belief of stymied action suggested itself. Or divine provision was acclaimed ever present where the belief of lack suggested itself. All along—in a manner of speaking—God knew that only He Himself and His perfect expression and qualities were present and active.
In truth, God, omnipresent Principle, actively holds all of us individually and collectively in spiritual perfection. He holds us not only during prayer, or Christian Science treatment, but always, no matter what the nature of the human dream. Even when human sense says we're asleep or under attack.
God maintains our ever-present perfection in Truth eternally. In this eternity man—including his substance, activity, and environment—is proclaimed everywhere and every whit free, potent through the Father, and blessed with endless opportunity. This is what Christian Science celebrates.
