The Practice of the Presence of God: and The Spiritual Maxims

The

Practice

of the

Presence

of

God

AND THE SPIRITUAL MAXIMUS

Brother Lawrence

FOREWARD BY MATTHEW FOX

Gardern City, New York

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 by Ixia Press

All rights reserved.

This Ixia Press edition, first published in 2023, is an unabridged republication of the revised edition of the work, originally published by Advance Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1899 [first publication: 1897]. A new Foreword by John Pavlovitz has been specially prepared for this volume.

Bibliographical Note

This Ixia Press edition, first published in 2023, is a slightly modified republication of The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life, Being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine (Brother Lawrence), published by Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, in 1895 and The Spiritual Maxims of Brother Lawrence, together with The Character by the Chronicler of the Conversations and Gathered Thoughts, published by The Griffith and Rowland Press, Philadelphia [n.d.]. A new Foreword has been specially prepared for this edition.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-84498-5

ISBN-10: 0-486-84498-6

Ixia Press

An imprint of Dover Publications

Manufactured in the United States of America

www.doverpublications.com/ixiapress

Contents

Forward by Matthew Fox

PART ONE

The Practice of the Presence of God;

the Best Rule of a Holy Life

PART TWO

The Spiritual Maxims or Means for

Attaining to the Presence of God

The Character of Brother Lawrence

Being The Teaching of His Life

Gathered Thoughts compiled from

the Life of Brother Lawrence

Endnotes

Foreword

Brother Lawrence, born Nicholas Herman in Lorraine, France, in the early 1600s, was the son of peasants with limited education. He came of age during the devastating Thirty Years’ War, which shattered central Europe from 1618 to 1648. As a young man, chased by poverty, he chose to join the army in order to eat. While still a teenager in battle, he saw a leafless tree in the midst of the battlefield. This generated a spiritual awakening for him—the recognition that the tree would be flowering in a few months spoke to his own deadness of soul and the divine power to resurrect from the dead. It is interesting how many men have had spiritual awakenings while serving in the army; one thinks of Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, and Teilhard de Chardin, who served as a stretcher-bearer in the First World War.

Years later, fighting against the Swedish infantry, Nicholas was taken prisoner by German troops who threatened to hang him as a spy, but upon seeing his courage, they let him go. When the Swedes marched into Lorraine, they left him wounded and lame for the rest of his life. This was no doubt the same Swedish invasion that set fire to Hildegard of Bingen’s monastery.

Following a time of convalescence at his parents’ home, Nicholas found a job as a footman to the treasurer for the king of France. But he confessed that as an awkward fellow, he broke everything. Eventually, he entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites in Paris and took the religious name of Lawrence of the Resurrection. His primary duties in the Order were working in the kitchen and, later, repairing sandals. His deep peace drew many fellow Carmelites as well as laypeople to him. His conversations and letters became the basis of this posthumous book, The Practice of the Presence of God, which became popular among both Catholics and Protestants. Father Joseph de Beaufort described Brother Lawrence this way: he had a frank open manner, which, when you met him, won your confidence at once, and made you feel that you had found a friend, to whom you could unburden yourself wholly.

The heart of Brother Lawrence’s teachings is found in the title—the presence of God appears on almost every page. Brother Lawrence said this phrase in my opinion contains the whole spiritual life. It parallels Jesus’s teaching about how the kingdom/queendom of God is within and among you and has already arrived. The resurrection, too, has already arrived.

Brother Lawrence continually urges us to connect our work to this presence. Even simple tasks like picking up a straw or cooking a meal can be communication with the divine if one’s attitude is tuned in to that. This is the takeaway for laypeople and monks alike: to stay present to the divine presence no matter how modest or how great one’s work is.

In addition to bringing work and spirit together, how else does Brother Lawrence’s teaching on the presence of God speak to people in the twenty-first century? He invites us to simplify our religious practice and urges minimal words—this God of love [is] satisfied with such few words, for God is always in the fund or bottom of [one’s] soul. We are to work from the heart, more than from books, ideas, and the head. Brother Lawrence wants us to move from religion to spirituality by trusting our experience and journeying deep into the heart, where, in fact, the divine dwells. Meister Eckhart calls this the ground of our being and the innermost part of our souls.

French Dominican Père Chenu, the father of creation spirituality and liberation theology, invokes the word presence often when he speaks of the contemplative and active life. Be present to the signs of the times, to both ongoing creation and ongoing incarnation, and to the suffering of one’s time. And respond creatively and courageously.

Look for these teachings and more as you read this book and translate it into your work, your living, and your practice.

May the peace of Brother Lawrence be with you.

Matthew Fox

Spiritual theologian, Episcopal

priest, author, and activist for gender justice and eco-justice

PART ONE

The Practice of the Presence of God;

the Best Rule of a Holy Life

v

PREFACE

This book consists of notes of several conversations had with, and letters written by Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine, a lowly and unlearned man, who, after having been a footman and soldier, was admitted a Lay Brother among the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666, and was afterwards known as Brother Lawrence.

His conversion, which took place when he was about eighteen years old, was the result, under God, of the mere sight in midwinter, of a dry and leafless tree, and of the reflections it stirred respecting the change the coming spring would bring. From that time he grew eminently in the knowledge and love of God, endeavoring constantly to walk "as