I am sure you have read Brother Lawrence’s little book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Printed as a classic by Revell in 1958, it is still available today.
Brother Lawrence served as a Lay brother among the Carmelites in Paris. For fifteen years his days were spent working in the kitchen of the monastery. Converted when he was eighteen, he died at eighty years of age.
In his book Brother Lawrence tells how his one desire was to practice God’s presence continually. After some time, the experience he sought became his. He was able to testify, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.” And, as he explained, his usual set times of prayer became “…only a continuation of the same exercise.”
The Practice of the Presence of God is not a book to be read once and then left unopened on the bookshelf. For any who seriously desire, as Brother Lawrence did, to practice God’s presence continually, his book should be read often. Some have experienced that reading a little of the book each day helps in learning to attain this “habitual sense of God.” Brother Lawrence learned to do what Paul commanded: “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). To follow Paul’s word and Brother Lawrence’s example is to personally experience how, as George Buttrick concluded, Jesus must have prayed:
“This is clear: we cannot separate his praying from his life… It (was) the bread and wine of all his days.”
Brother Lawrence admitted that it took some diligence to form the habit of continual prayer, but once he had, he said, “I am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.”
Brother Lawrence longed for others to know the experience he had. He said, “Were I a preacher, I should above all things preach the practice of the presence of God.”
It is not surprising that this was the same man who believed that, “…those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep.”
Reflection:
1. Do I desire something more in my prayer life?
2. Have I learned to practice the presence of God in my life?
