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Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection and The Practice of the Presence of God Fr. Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam. Abstract: Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a humble seventeenth-century shoemaker in a large Parisian abbey, developed a remarkable practice of constant mindfulness of the presence of God. His letters were collected and his sayings recorded by a theologian who carried on a conversation with Brother Lawrence over a period of decades. The result was The Practice of the Presence of God, which is still cherished as a classic among books about Christian prayer.1 This article appeared in Religion East & West, Issue 7, October 2007.

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rother Lawrence of the Resurrection, the seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelite brother, proposed that nothing can better transform the life of a Christian than the presence of God, if one consciously acknowledges and reverences that presence by abiding in it in faith and love.

This simple yet profound teaching, preserved in The Practice of the Presence of God, a compendium of Brother Lawrence’s writings and sayings first published in 1693, has been embraced by countless Christians through the subsequent centuries. Brother Lawrence’s recommendations for practice continue to enjoy a wide appreciation today.2 The renowned Catholic spiritual writer Fr. Henri Nouwen, for example, writes in his introduction to a recent edition of Lawrence’s book: When I was exposed to his thoughts for the first time, they seemed simple, even somewhat naïve and unrealistic; but the deeper I entered into them and the longer I reflected on them, the more I became aware that Brother Lawrence’s advice to walk constantly in the presence of God is not just a nice idea for a seventeenth-century monk but a most important challenge to our present-day life situation.3

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Nouwen himself goes on to suggest the transformative power of this practice: One of the most stimulating aspects of this precious book is Brother Lawrence’s deep conviction that prayer is not saying prayers but a way of living in which all we do becomes prayer. . . . This simple but difficult way of Brother Lawrence is indeed a great challenge for us today. It is a hard way but a way worth following. It is the way to God.4 Because of its simplicity and directness, Brother Lawrence’s teaching is also being discovered as a resource for the interreligious dialogue.5 Born as Nicholas Herman into humble circumstances in the French Lorraine in 1611, Brother Lawrence learned Christian principles from his parents but received little or no formal education. He went on to military service, then lived a period in solitude. In 1640, he entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris as lay brother. He worked as a cook and later as a repairer of shoes for the large monastic community. Regarding his intellectual and spiritual formation there, Conrad De Meester notes: During the novitiate the lay brothers attended certain formation classes with the young clerics. . . . Lawrence possessed a certain intellectual training. He sometimes spoke of the books he had read or examined.

He had the opportunity to hear many fine sermons in the monastery church or those of Paris.6 De Meester stresses the influence on Lawrence of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, the two giant founders of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. Certainly Lawrence would have felt his practice was confirmed

by Teresa’s teachings, for instance her encouraging words: If you speak, strive to remember that the One with whom you are speaking is present within. If you listen, remember that you are going to hear the One who is very close to you when He speaks. In sum, bear in mind that you can, if you want, avoid ever withdrawing from such good company. . . . If you can, practice this recollection often during the day. . . . As you become accustomed to it you will experience the benefit, either sooner or later. Once this recollection is given by the Lord, you will not exchange it for any treasure.7 Lawrence’s description of his soul as experiencing, after a dark-night period, “a deep inner peace, as if it had found its center and place of rest,”8 very much echoes the language of John of the Cross, as De Meester points out.9 There are direct echoes of John of the Cross, too, in the way Lawrence describes his own practice:

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I keep myself in his presence by simple attentiveness and a general loving awareness of God that I call “actual presence of God,” or better, a quiet and secret conversation of the soul with God that is lasting.10 The phrase “general loving awareness of God” indicates that although Lawrence will have access to particular images and models of God in his attempt to articulate his experience, he locks himself into no particular way of understanding God. His experience, like that of John of the Cross, is at its heart radically apophatic; that is, it can only be described by saying what it is not. And this is the primary source of Lawrence’s spirituality: his own ineffable experience.

Thus, Lawrence was not just theorizing; the practice he proposed he also lived, over the decades, and in an ever more ongoing way. It is also sustained and confirmed by the experience and teaching of the two founders of his order, both doctors of the Church. Through them especially, his practice is rooted in the earlier contemplative heritage of Christianity, back to Scripture itself. It is not surprising, then, that indirect references to Scripture can be found throughout The Practice of the Presence of God. Certainly the themes of abiding in God, of constant prayer, and of seeking God’s constant presence occur regularly in Scripture.11 Brother Lawrence did not himself write The Practice of the Presence of God. Rather, his biographer and editor, Monsignor Joseph de Beaufort, a vicar-general and theologian to the archbishop of Paris, gathered sixteen of Lawrence’s letters and some of his maxims and joined them with summaries Beaufort had written of four of his own conversations with Lawrence. Beaufort also added a eulogy and biography and other sections to fill out the volume. The book was published in French in 1693, two years after Lawrence’s death.12 Thus, our contact with Lawrence is mediated by Beaufort’s work.

To what extent might the theologian have sought to polish or otherwise modify the thought of the simple lay brother? De Meester acknowledges that there might have been some theological embellishing and personal elaborations, but he also notes that Beaufort had “frequent contacts with Brother Lawrence over a period of thirty-five years.”13 De Meester concludes: There is no reason to doubt that [Beaufort] maintained Lawrence’s line of thought. Even if chronology or textual criticism are not his strong points, Beaufort is, nonetheless, an upright, discreet, and faithful man. . . .

Suzanne Boucheraux said it well: the biography is “of too pure a vein, and the tone of the accounts too sincere, for us to doubt the fidelity of a witness less concerned with describing the man than with conveying the words of a saint.”14 Issue 10, October 2010

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In writing his letters and in conversing with Beaufort and others, it was clearly not Lawrence’s intent to engage in academic disquisitions or theoretical debates. Rather, his sole concern was to bear witness to a practice that he wished others to practice. Lawrence was known to manifest a somewhat gruff manner until he was sure of someone’s sincerity. We see this in Beaufort’s record, written with admirable fidelity and humility, of his first conversation with Lawrence, in which Lawrence almost rudely refers to Beaufort’s work as theologian: [He said] that in order to arrive at self-abandonment to God to the extent that he willed, we must watch over all the movements of the soul, since it can become entangled in spiritual things as well as in the most base. God gives the necessary light to those who have the true desire to be with him, and that if I had this intention, I could ask to see him whenever I wanted without fear of bothering him, and if not, I ought not to come to see him at all.15 Lawrence does not hold back in proposing the spiritual efficacy and power of his practice, as well as its simplicity: The holiest, most ordinary, and most necessary practice of the spiritual life is that of the presence of God. It is to take delight in and become accustomed to his divine company, speaking humbly and conversing with him all the time, at every moment, without rule or measure, especially in times of temptation, suffering, aridity, weariness, even infidelity and sin. We must continually apply ourselves so that all our actions, without exception, become a kind of brief conversation with God, not in a contrived manner but coming from the purity and simplicity of our hearts.16 It is evident from this emphatic passage that Lawrence did not favor adopting a series of complicated spiritual practices; rather, he urged a disciplined focusing on the one practice, or more immediately, on the abiding presence of God. He taught that the ongoing communion with God must be “without rule or measure, not in a contrived manner.”17 Lawrence’s practice was thus radically simple; De Meester characterizes it as “the methodless method.”18 Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets in the twofold commandment of love.19 For Brother Lawrence, in a similar way, everything in the spiritual life wants to be summed up in love. And this love is encountered in mutual presence—God’s loving presence to us, our responding presence to God. Beaufort summarizes one of his conversations with Lawrence as follows:

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All penances and other exercises serve only as a means to reach union with God by love. Once [Lawrence] had considered this carefully, he realized it was shorter to go straight there by an exercise of continual love, by doing everything for the love of God! [He said] that the actions of the understanding are very different from those of the will, for the former amounted to little, while the latter were everything. Only loving and rejoicing with God truly matter.

Even if we did all the penances possible, they would not so much as take away one single sin if they were separated from love. Without worrying, we must look to the blood of Christ for the remission of sin, working only at loving God with our whole heart. . . . [He said] that he thought neither of death, nor of his sins, nor of paradise, nor of hell, but only of doing little things for the love of God, since he was not capable of doing great things.20 This central theme of love returns throughout The Practice of the Presence of God. It reveals a remarkably simplified and evangelical approach to spirituality, even in an age when fear of damnation tended to generate austere and complex practices: [He said] that he had always been governed by love with no other interest, and having once decided to perform all his actions for the love of God, he was at peace. . . . He reasoned in this way: “I entered religious life solely for the love of God and have tried to act for him alone. Whether I be damned or saved, I always want to act purely for his love; at least I can say that, until I die, I will do whatever I can to love him.” 21 Lawrence had begun his spiritual journey in pain and darkness, and with a more discursive form of prayer concerned with the “last things”: “During the first years I ordinarily thought about death, judgment, hell, paradise, and my sins when I prayed. I continued in this fashion for a few years.”22 His meditation periods spent in this way did not bring him great serenity or transformation of heart and mind. Beaufort reports that Lawrence spoke of spending the regular meditation periods fighting off thoughts and falling into them again, so that he could never pray as he was supposed to do. Lawrence himself wrote of this period of anguish: I will admit that during the first ten years I suffered a great deal. The apprehension that I did not belong to God as I wished, my past sins always before my eyes, and the lavish graces God gave me, were the sum and substance of all my woes. . . . It seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and God himself were against me, and that faith alone was on my side.23 Issue 10, October 2010

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As De Meester notes, Lawrence here echoes directly some of John of the Cross’s writings about the dark night of the senses and of the spirit.24 William Johnston, S.J., argues that a Christian contemplative is one who experiences a deep sense of Divine Presence, whereas a Christian mystic is one who has also journeyed through the purification of the dark nights.25 In terms of Johnston’s definitions, Lawrence was both a contemplative and a mystic. But Lawrence’s resolute focus on God’s presence brought him out of anguish and darkness into a joy that was enduring and often of great intensity: I gave up all devotions and prayers that were not required, and I devoted myself exclusively to remaining always in his holy presence. . . . This sometimes results in interior, and often exterior, contentment and joys so great that I have to perform childish acts, appearing more like folly than devotion, to control them and keep them from showing outwardly.26 Certainly his focused practice effected an amazing transformation of his own mind and heart, drawing him out of deep anguish and fear into superabundant happiness. He expressed his experience of God as of a transcendent king, but also of a tender lover and a nourishing mother: I ask him pardon and abandon myself into his hands so he can do with me as he pleases. Far from chastising me, this King, full of goodness and mercy, lovingly embraces me, seats me at his table, waits on me himself, gives me the keys to his treasures, and treats me in all things as his favorite; he converses with me and takes delight in me in countless ways, without ever speaking of forgiveness or taking away my previous faults.

Although I beg him to fashion me according to his heart, I see myself still weaker and miserable, yet ever more caressed by God. . . . My most typical approach is this simple attentiveness and general loving awareness of God, from which I derive greater sweetness and satisfaction than an infant receives from his mother’s breast. Therefore, if I may dare use the expression, I would gladly call this state the “breasts of God” because of the indescribable sweetness I taste and experience there.27 And elsewhere in a letter to a revered nun, he writes, in the third person but evidently of himself: You will see that his principal concern throughout the more than forty years he has been in religious life has been always to be with God, and to do, say, or think nothing that could displease him. He has no other interest than the pure love of God who deserves infinitely more besides. He is now so accustomed to this divine presence that he receives

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constant help in every situation. His soul has been enjoying continual inner consolations for about thirty years. . . . These experiences make him so certain that God is always in the depths of his soul that he has no doubts about it, no matter what he may do or what may happen.

Judge for yourself, Reverend Mother, how great are the contentment and satisfaction he enjoys. Constantly perceiving so great a treasure within himself, he has no anxiety about finding nor any about seeking it; it is completely accessible, and he is free to make use of it as he pleases. . . .

Let us profit from the example and sentiments of this friar, little known in the world but known and caressed by God.28 Despite these experiences, Brother Lawrence remained a simple lay brother, and he never conceived of his practice as exclusively the domain of a spiritual elite, for any special cloister. He writes to a laywoman: “We do not always have to be in church to be with God. We can make of our hearts an oratory.”29 Nor does the practice presuppose great sanctity or full mastery of all the precepts. Lawrence notes: “God seems to choose the worst sinners to give the greatest graces, rather than those who remain innocent, because that shows his mercy more.”30 The spiritual writer and psychiatrist Gerald May also very much stresses the simplicity of Brother Lawrence’s practice, and thus its authenticity and universality: At its core, the spiritual life is very simple. Jesus told his disciples they needed to become like little children to enter the reign of heaven (Matthew 18:3). Moses told the people of Israel that the Word was not far from them, that it was already in their mouths and hearts (Deuteronomy 30: 14). Life with God, then, does not require great theological sophistication; it is for everyone. Nor is our spiritual life restricted to hallowed places and mountaintop moments. It is the simple essence of living, moving, and having our being in God in every present moment, wherever we find ourselves, whatever we are doing (Acts 17:28). Such is the way of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. For three centuries his simple wisdom has crossed denominational boundaries and theological differences to inspire spiritual seekers throughout the world. The universality of his appeal is extraordinary, but it is due in large part to the very ordinariness he taught.31 The practice, this psychiatrist argues, aims to focus our minds and hearts in a liberating way, and thus to transform our lives: There is a rough, even tough quality in his single-minded dedication to the practice of the presence of God. There is no time to waste, either Issue 10, October 2010

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in distraction or in regrets. There is no time for fear or worry, no place for despair. There is hardly even time for thinking. In every present moment we must get on with living in the direct, immediate love of God. Nothing is more important than this, nothing more worthy of our serious intent.32 May notes that this practice is something that we are to do, yet it opens out to infinitely greater resources that embrace us and carry us forward: Brother Lawrence maintains that the practice of the presence of God is both simple and easy. Americans may agree that it is simple, but most of us will not find it so easy. We will tend, as with everything, to look at it as something to achieve. We will see it in terms of success or failure.

With this view we will find ourselves failures and the practice nearly impossible. We need to look at it in Brother Lawrence’s way, as an endeavor requiring our sincere desire and earnest dedication, but wholly dependent upon God’s grace. Then, even in our failures, we come back to God’s presence, to God’s mercy. With Brother Lawrence, we can say to God: “It’s up to you.”33  Notes 1. This paper was presented to the third annual Northern California Chan/ZenCatholic Dialogue, held at the San Francisco Zen Center in January 2004.

2. See for instance Conrad De Meester, O.C.D., “General Introduction” in Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God, Critical Edition, trans. Salvatore Sciurba, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1994), xxxii and ff. This paper will utilize for all its quotations from Brother Lawrence this edition of The Practice of the Presence of God (PPG hereafter).

3. Henri Nouwen, “Forward” in Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Image Books, 1977), 10.

4. Nouwen, 12.

5. See for instance the notes of Elmer H. Douglas in his The Kitchen Saint and the Heritage of Islam (New Jersey: Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 1989).

See also William Johnston, S.J., The Mirror Mind: Zen-Christian Dialogue (New York: Fordham, 1990); The Still Point: Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism (New York: Harper, 1970); and Christian Zen (New York: Harper, 1971). Recently, two of my graduate students chose independently for their term paper topics a comparison between The Practice of the Presence of God and a Zen source—one working with Dogen, the other with Vīsuddhimāgga: The Path of Purification.

6. De Meester, xix, xxii.

7. Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works (Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980), II, 148–9.

8. PPG, 53.

9. PPG, 55–6 n. 5.

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11. See for instance Psalms 16:8; 25:15; 61:8; 71:15; and Luke 18:1: “Then Jesus taught them a parable about their need to pray always.” See also John 15:4ff.: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abide in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. . . . As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” See also 1 Thes. 5:16ff.: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” et al. (translations from the New Revised Standard Version). Regarding the Psalm texts, see the striking rendering of two of them by Norman Fischer, Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms (New York: Viking, 2002), 19, 38: “Your presence is always before me. . . . My eyes always look on you.” This theme continues through the patristic and medieval periods. For instance, a text from an early father, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c.

215), utilized today in collections of liturgical readings stresses: “Nor must we confine our worship to special days, but offer it perpetually throughout our lives and in every way . . . so he who possesses true knowledge honors God . . . in no specific place or appropriate sanctuary, still less at certain feasts or on definite days, but everywhere and all his life. . . . [S]urely one who is always in the presence of God, through spiritual knowledge and a life of ceaseless thanksgiving, cannot help but become a better person in every way, in deed, word and thought. Such is the man who is convinced of God’s presence everywhere, refusing to believe that he is enclosed in any specific place. Then because of this conviction of ours that God is present everywhere, our whole life becomes a celebration.” Clement of Alexandria, Ex lib. Stromatum 7, 7, in A Word in Season: Readings for the Liturgical Hours (Villanova, PA: Augustinian Press, 1999), VII, 228.

12. The first English translation appeared in 1724.

13. De Meester, xxiii; see also xli, n. 31.

14. Ibid., 32.

15. PPG, 90.

16. PPG, 36.

17. Ibid.

18. De Meester, xxxv.

19. Cf. Matthew 22:36-40 and parallels at Mark 12:28–34 and Luke 20:25–8.

20. PPG, 94.

21. Ibid., 91.

22. Ibid., 22.

23. Ibid., 52–3.

24. Ibid., 55 n.4.

25. William Johnston, Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2000), 118–9.

26. PPG, 53.

27. Ibid., 54.

28. Ibid., 49–51.

29. Ibid., 69.

30. Ibid., 94.

31. Ibid., ix.

32. Ibid., x.

33. Ibid., xi.

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