Presence
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (ca. 1611 - 1691), who spent most of his life serving in a Carmelite monastery in Paris, sometimes as a kitchen hand, sometimes as an errand boy and doorkeeper, had a genius for shining light on what is most important: practicing the presence of God in all things.
“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 a tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”
Brother Lawrence
When I first read the book The Practice of the Presence of God, a collection of correspondence and conversations between Brother Lawrence and a friend, I was comforted by the humble simplicity of his faith. Like St. Therese of Lisieux, Brother Lawrence lived what might be described an unremarkable life: as a soldier, a footman, a servant, and a kitchen hand. Yet he transformed the ordinariness of his life and duties with a modest disposition: his simple love of God. He recognized the astonishing reality of Creation in everything and everyone; and he lived within the light of that knowing.
The moment of his conversion, the radical change of mind and heart that reoriented him towards God, was one that outwardly might have been mistaken as very ordinary.
On a cold, winter evening he came upon a tree standing in the snow. It was bare of leaves and stark against the sky. It appeared utterly devoid of life, a skeleton preserved in ice. Yet in that same moment, in his mind’s eye, he had a vision of the tree resurrected, buoyant and blossoming with the fullness of life: a fragrant and joyful anticipation of Spring. At once, something of the glory and mystery of creation struck him with the full force of its truth, and he was overwhelmed by “a high view of the power and providence of God.”
Brother Lawrence’s Pilgrim Way
I love to imagine Brother Lawrence in his bustling kitchen, “turning cakes in the frying pan, happier than a king.” He transformed the ordinary course of his day in the kitchen, or running errands, or attending the doorway to the monastery, into a devotion, a sacrament. In the pilgrim way of Brother Lawrence, there is scant division between work and praise, between the secular and the sacred. His work was his joy, because he offered it to God. He also talked to God, openly and humbly and with a sense of friendship that Jesus asks of us all; and he did it with such ease! It was not folly or pretense. Everyone around him witnessed his way of being, his joyful humility.
Brother Lawrence never planned to make any of his writing known outside the monastery. It was after his death in 1691 that his friends, the Carmelite monks, published his writings in a small book that, like his pancakes and stews, continues to nourish readers centuries later. It is by his fruits that Brother Lawrence’s pilgrim way can be received as something good and true, and not merely naive fantasy. Those who knew him most, who saw him everyday, who ate his food, and partook of his gentle fellowship, were those who also felt it was important to introduce Brother Lawrence to the whole world.
I often turn to Brother Lawrence, when folding laundry or doing dishes or chopping tomatoes. I wonder what it would be like to offer it all to God, as a devotion, as a giant thank you for my very life; and to talk to God with ease, and with the confidence that He is listening.
I think it was his pure and simple joy that allowed Brother Lawrence to practice being present with God in all things. Maybe being genuinely present, and inviting God into our hearts, is possible for all of us. I’m sure Brother Lawrence would tell us so. He was not alone in his belief that our Lord is with us always, even in our most humble tasks. St. Teresa of Avila, with equal conviction, said: Entre los pucheros anda el Senor: The Lord walks among the pots and pans.
“We search for stated ways and methods of learning how to love God, and to come at that love we disquiet our minds by I know not how many devices; we give ourselves a world of trouble and pursue a multitude of practices to attain to a sense of the presence of God. And yet it is so simple. How very much shorter it is and easier to do our common business purely for the love of God, to set His consecrating mark on all we lay hands to, and thereby to foster the sense of His abiding presence by communion of our heart with His! There is no need either of art or science; just as we are, we can go to Him simple and with single heart.”
Brother Lawrence
References:
The Practice of the Presence of God, with Spiritual Maxims; foreword by Tessa Bielecki; Shambhala Press, 2005; and: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/10497-practicing-the-presence-of-god-old-habits-new-year/day/1