In Memoriam: Anna Beth Vaglienti

Since my mother’s passing, people have been asking me if I’m going to hold a memorial service for her. It’s something that I’ve been conflicted about because while I can see there is interest in one, neither my mother nor I have ever really been the sort to host big events. When my father passed last year she considered having a service here at the house for just family but in the end chose not to have one at all.

This last week I was in San Antonio collecting her things from the nursing home. While there I stayed with my aunt and one day we drove over to Austin to see my cousin. The three of us found a quiet place to sit and there we shared spiritual readings while thinking of my mother. I think she would have liked that and it’s the only memorial service I intend to hold for her. I did want to share the readings I brought with others though.

I actually looked these up a few days before her passing and had been looking forward to sharing them with her at Easter. As head usher for my church, it is my duty to mail out the usher’s schedule for the month but I’d been lazy and hadn’t sent one out for April. We start each usher’s meeting with readings but since I hadn’t sent out the schedule, I hadn’t assigned anyone to bring any for the first Sunday of April. On such days I try to bring readings myself from one of Mary Baker Eddy‘s works; usually either Science and Health with Keys to the Scriptures or one of her other works. On this particular day I picked up Prose Works and opened it to a random page, trusting Divine Mind to guide me. I found that I had opened the book to a section of No and Yes that I thought was perfect for Easter. In fact, I liked the readings so much that I was looking forward to sharing it with my mother the next time I saw her. Unfortunately I never got the chance but I thought I could at least share them with her friends.

(No and Yes 35:24-36:26)

Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only “the kingdom of God is at hand,” but “the kingdom of God is within you.” Hence there is no sin, for God’s kingdom is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human kingdom is nowhere, and must be unreal. Jesus taught and demonstrated the infinite as one, and not as two. He did not teach that there are two deities, — one infinite and the other finite; for that would be impossible. He knew God as infinite, and therefore as the All-in-all; and we shall know this truth when we awake in the divine likeness. Jesus’ true and conscious being never left heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while mortals believed it was here. He once spoke of himself (John iii. 13) as “the Son of man which is in heaven,” — remarkable words, as wholly opposed to the popular view of Jesus’ nature.

The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in the conscious reality and royalty of his being, — holding the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuperated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had he been as conscious of those evils as he was of God, wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus could not have resisted them; nor could he have conquered the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher concept than that in which he appeared at his birth.

(37:11-20)

The spiritual interpretation of the vicarious atonement of Jesus, in Christian Science, unfolds the full-orbed glory of that event; but to regard this wonder of glory, this most marvellous demonstration, as a personal and material bloodgiving — or as a proof that sin is known to the divine Mind, and that what is unlike God demands His continual presence, knowledge, and power, to meet and master it — would make the atonement to be less than the at-one-ment, whereby the work of Jesus would lose its efficacy and lack the “signs following.”

(38:13-23)

This Truth is the rock which the builders rejected; but “the same is become the head of the corner.” This is the chief corner-stone, the basis and support of creation, the interpreter of one God, the infinity and unity of good.

In proportion as mortals approximate the understanding of Christian Science, they take hold of harmony, and material incumbrance disappears. Having one God, one Mind, one consciousness, — which includes only His own nature, — and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute Christian Science, which must demonstrate the nothingness of any other state or stage of being.