May 6, 2025
With hardened political factions increasingly dividing nations, and ideological disagreements splintering our Catholic communities, all of us can and do experience internal conflict and personal agitation that can spill over into our relationships within our families, workplaces, and various sorts of communities. How do we retain our inner peace and good health of heart, mind, soul and body in the midst of such turmoil? Well, it’s actually not all that complicated or complex. Simply put, radically uniting ourselves to the Resurrected King of Peace, Christ Himself. To that end, let’s look at what the real experts say; in particular, let’s look at Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. More specifically, let’s explore what has come to be known as a “minor” spiritual classic entitled, The Practice of the Presence of God. The following selection from a small portion of his amazingly short spiritual work referred to simply as: “Conversations with Brother Lawrence” gives us a solid starting point:
“That we should surrender ourselves in things temporal and in things spiritual, entirely and with complete abandonment to God and take our happiness in doing as He wills whether He leads us by consolation or not, for they are all the same to the soul truly resigned to His will.”
These very simple but spiritually complex words most fully encapsulate the main theses in perhaps all of what remains of Brother Lawrence’s complete spiritual works. As the above account of a conversation between Abbé Joseph de Beaufort, the Superior of the Carmelite monastery in which Brother Lawrence spent his religious life, and Brother Lawrence suggests, Brother Lawrence’s goal for his soul — for any soul — is the ineffable pursuit of peace and happiness that, quite frankly, only comes from continual and constant union with God. Self-help gurus on social media and elsewhere have all failed in their quest for the same. Though perfect union obviously could only take place after death, Brother Lawrence was convinced that by “practicing the presence of God” a soul could make much greater progress towards this unity than anyone thought possible. Based on this particular passage, as well as additional accounts of other various conversations and assorted meditations and letters of Brother Lawrence’s which have been preserved over the years, a soul could be said to “achieve” peace and happiness by living in the presence of God if they sincerely engaged in the following three practices:
1) Abandonment; or, if you will, surrender to God’s Providence;
2) Complete acceptance to God’s will in all things;
3) In utter and complete faith, maintain continual conversation with God at all times.
The ultimate purpose of this, the first in a series of articles, will be to summarily highlight Brother Lawrence’s treatment of these practices — undergirded by distinguished, though not necessarily canonized saints — as they are presented in his collected spiritual works, virtually all of which are compiled in the single volume book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Now, before we start this journey, it is at least worthwhile to provide some information on Brother Lawrence himself, a simple and humble lay Carmelite friar, as well as on the compilation of the book itself.
To begin, very, very little is actually known about Brother Lawrence, and most of the information is, at best, obscure or even contradictory. It is traditionally held that he was born in Herimesnil, Lorraine, France sometime between the years 1606 – 1614. He led an uneventful though fairly pious childhood guided by devoutly religious parents. As a young eighteen year-old soldier fighting in the forces of Lorraine during the Thirty Years War, he was captured and charged with being a spy. Threatened with an imminent hanging, he was somehow able to persuade his captors of his innocence and was eventually released. Shortly thereafter, with the horror of such a brutal war in the name of religion continually haunting him, he eventually decided that the only way to obtain true peace and happiness was to devote his entire life to Jesus Christ. At the encouragement of an uncle who himself was a Carmelite, he decided to become a Carmelite friar with one small caveat to the story: literally just before entering the Carmel, he met a rich young man who had recently renounced all his possessions to follow a strict eremitical way of life; as a result of that encounter, the still youthful perhaps impetuous Brother Lawrence decided that the eremitical life was exactly what he wanted. And so he did. He began an eremitical way of life.
Title: A Hermit. Date: 1664. Institution: Rijksmuseum. Providing Country: Netherlands. Public Domain
Not surprisingly, his time as a hermit was somewhat short-lived. Realizing that his spiritual life needed some king of harmonious order to it, a more formal routine if you will, he applied and was accepted as a lay brother at the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites on Rue de Vaugirard. In the year 1642, two years after being given the name Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, he was perpetually professed. Assigned mostly menial tasks, he eventually acquired a reputation for holiness that spread far beyond the monastery’s walls. Although his early years in religious life were mostly difficult, he clung to and continually hungered for an even greater devotion to our Blessed Mother and to Jesus, truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Is that not a familiar devotional path for so many of the Christian faithful? For so many young Catholics today?
Brother Lawrence’s holiness emanated through his rough and ruddy appearance and abrupt personality. Brother was aptly described by the noted French theologian Fenelon as being, “gross by nature, and delicate by grace …though the mixture seems agreeable and shows God in him.” Despite his growing popularity and prominence, Brother Lawrence shunned the public spotlight and lived Gospel-like simplicity, continually seeking ways to lead a quiet, simple, and secluded life. Lest we think otherwise because we often do, it must be noted that he was always available to help out his fellow men and women in any way possible. So then, after roughly 50 years professed and a lingering painful illness, he died in his monastery on February 12, 1691. His life was said to truly be an example of holiness that could not be contained even though he lived in complete obscurity while performing the most menial of tasks — a life, quite simply, continually enveloped in the practice of the presence of God. We can certainly see why his spiritual works have been most appropriately compiled under the title, The Practice of the Presence of God.
It’s worth noting here that though Brother Lawrence’s works had at one time been suspected of being aligned with the mystical teachings of a Fr. Miguel de Molinos, the whole “controversy” itself has proven over time to be largely groundless (Fr Miguel de Molinos was a Spanish priest eventually tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for “heresy” – for promoting the heresy of Quietism). Though these writings of Father Molinos were considered by many to be extremely edifying, they nonetheless ended up putting him in a prison cell for life. On the face of it, definitely tragic, but more or less a symptom or reaction to the cultural times the Church found Herself in within Christendom. Staying on point, it should be said that The Practice of the Presence of God, for all practical purposes, is not really a “theology book,” per se, at all. It is, rather, a collection of varied material gathered together by Abbé Joseph de Beaufort, Brother Lawrence’s superior at the monastery of Rue de Vaugirard. And, like many great saints before and after him, Brother Lawrence wrote little and destroyed most of what he wrote because he felt that he was gravely unworthy. This self-perception is continually expressed in his letters which invariably contain pointed, forthright admonitions such as the following – most interestingly for our readers, addressed to an unidentified, “Reverend Mother:”
“… I must tell you that it is only with great reluctance that I am giving way to your importunities and only on the conditions that you will allow no one to see my letter. If I thought you would allow anyone to see it, all my desire for your advancement on the way to perfection would not persuade me to write it! …”
Brother’s book is actually a compilation of some letters (sixteen in all), some fragments of meditations (spiritual maxims), and some recollections of conversations Joseph de Beaufort had with Br Lawrence (four). It is this truly timeless and ever relevant material — Conversations, Letters, and Spiritual Maxims — that comprise the book that so many have come to know as, The Practice of the Presence of God.
More on this Practice to come in future posts. In the meantime, please pray and click-on the link below to sign-up for our Newsletter, Social Media Notifications, and if at all possible, to contribute financially to our community’s mission to inspire, catechize, and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The King of Peace. ✌️