Prayer Provides Immunity and Contagious Disease Proved Powerless

I was fortunate to grow up in a loving home where Christian Science was cherished and practiced. Our family practitioner was a good friend of Gilbert Carpenter and often visited Mr. Carpenter. The memory of many childhood healings left no doubt in my thought about the effectiveness of prayer, as taught in Christian Science, to heal both quickly and permanently.

One particular healing stands out. It was actually a healing my brother had of a contagious disease. I was about ten years old at the time. My parents believed it to be German measles. A Christian Science practitioner was called for healing prayer. My brother was healed quickly. The practitioner also prayed to know that man was immune from disease, as well as that there was no contagion. Consequently no one else in the family could contract this belief called disease — and no one did. My brother’s quick healing was the end of it. As Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Truth handles the most malignant contagion with perfect assurance.” (p. 176) And also on page 369:23 she writes, “The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science ….”

I did not think about this experience for years until I had a sleepover with my best friend in high school. She and I shared the same bed during the night, and both of us went to school together the next day. By mid-afternoon, my friend, who was not a Christian Scientist, was sent home from school with German measles. Her case was medically confirmed, as her father was a medical doctor. I never came down with any of the symptoms of this disease.

Then, as an adult and in my early forties, I was required to have blood tests done for some international travel. I remember the nurse coming out of the back with the results and saying, “Your tests are all fine and, oh, by the way, you still have an immunity to German measles.” She then stated that the effectiveness of childhood vaccinations would have usually worn off at that point in my life, and it was very unusual to find that I still had this immunity. Apparently prayer has resulted in a lifetime immunity to this disease, as I am now, humanly speaking, many years beyond this blood test and still have never contracted this disease.

I just smiled and thanked her for her work. I did not tell her that my parents were Christian Scientists and had successfully applied for an exemption from vaccinations when I was a child. Nor did I tell her that I had never had the disease. I was smiling because I knew the good report was the result of those early childhood prayers by a beloved practitioner, proving once again that prayer is the most effective and reliable means of protection from disease, and that prayer can be both curative and preventative. As an expansion of this concept, as God is immaculate and pure, so is man and therefore man is immune to anything that would say otherwise.

An additional thought on contagion and immunity is that I experienced childhood colds, etc., which seemed normal at the time, but I was always healed of these false claims. I was told by a practitioner at a later date that as one grows in Science, one will cease to have colds and the flu because progress is the law of being. (A paraphrasing of Miscellaneous Writings 15:19 “for progress is the law of infinity.”) This has proved to be the case. I just stopped getting them. How wonderful that our own spiritual progress will also provide immunity to disease.

For this experience and for the many healings which I have experienced over my lifetime, I am truly grateful.