About the book
Brother Lawrence (Nicolas Herman, c. 1614-1691) was a Carmelite lay brother in Paris who spent most of his life working in the monastery kitchen, and later mending sandals. He didn't write this book. After his death Joseph de Beaufort, vicar general of the archbishop of Paris, put together four conversations he had had with him in 1666-1667, his letters and a few short maxims.
Central argument
For Lawrence the whole of the spiritual life comes down to one habit: keeping company with God all day, in short, simple turns of the mind and heart, whatever you are doing.
Prayer is not a separate activity reserved for set times; washing pots, buying wine for the convent or turning an omelette in the pan can be done "for the love of God", and the size of the work doesn't matter, only the love it's done with.
The practice is hard at the beginning, because the mind keeps wandering, and the answer is not to fight the distraction but to come back, quietly, every time. When he fails he doesn't dwell on it: he tells God that this is what he does when left to himself, asks for help and returns to the conversation.
Over the years, he says, the habit becomes natural, and the presence of God stops being something he has to remember and becomes the place he lives in.
Objections
- It is almost a method without a method. Lawrence says you need "neither art nor science", only to turn to God. But he himself says he "suffered much" for the first ten years, afraid he wasn't devoted enough and at times that there was "no salvation" for him. The book tells you that those years happened, and very little about how to get through them. For someone starting out, "just keep returning" is true and also very thin.
- We read Lawrence through Beaufort. The conversations are Beaufort's summaries in the third person, edited after Lawrence's death, so it's hard to know how much of the wording is his.
- The ideal of pure love, with no thought of reward or punishment and even a wish for suffering, can slide into indifference to oneself, body included. In the 17th century it came close to quietism; after the quietism controversy the book fell out of favour in France and survived mostly among Protestant readers.
- The letters repeat the same advice many times, sometimes almost with the same words.
Examples / Notable passages
- The tree in winter. At eighteen, looking at a tree stripped of its leaves and thinking that in a few months the leaves, flowers and fruit would come back, he had a sense of God's providence and power that never left him. That was his conversion.
- The kitchen. He disliked kitchen work by nature, and did it for fifteen years. The noise and the people calling him didn't separate him from God more than kneeling in front of the sacrament.
- Little things. "We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."
- Set times of prayer. The hours of prayer were no different for him from the rest of the day; he kept them because the rule asked him to, but he didn't need them to find God.
- After a fault. No long self-accusation: he admits it, says that without God he would never do otherwise, and goes back to his work and to God.
Highlights
The method
- p. 13, loc. 164: "That we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment, that we may beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them, and giving Him thanks when we have done."
- p. 7, loc. 82: "That we ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity, speaking to Him frankly and plainly, and imploring His assistance in our affairs, just as they happen."
- p. 12, loc. 152: "That there needed neither art nor science for going to God, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him, or for His sake, and to love Him only."
- p. 34, loc. 426: "It is not necessary for being with God to be always at church; we may make an oratory of our heart, wherein to retire from time to time, to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love."
Work and set times of prayer
- p. 14, loc. 178: "That the most excellent method he had found of going to God, was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men, and (as far as we are capable) purely for the love of God."
- p. 14, loc. 183: "That his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of God, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine love: and that when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with God."
- p. 36, loc. 447: "One way to recollect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquillity, is not to let it wander too far at other times."
Wandering and coming back
- p. 36, loc. 444: "If it sometimes wander, and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that; trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind, than to recollect it; the will must bring it back in tranquillity."
- p. 17, loc. 221: "When he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty; if he found well, he returned thanks to God; if otherwise, he asked pardon; and without being discouraged, he set his mind right again, and continued his exercise of the presence of God, as if he had never deviated from it."
How the habit grows
- p. 7, loc. 73: "That in order to form a habit of conversing with God continually, and referring all we do to Him; we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty."
- p. 21, loc. 276: "For the first ten years I suffered much: the apprehension that I was not devoted to God, as I wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favours which God did me, were the matter and source of my sufferings. During this time I fell often, and rose again presently."
- p. 30, loc. 382: "The heart must be empty of all other things; because God will possess the heart alone; and as He cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all besides, so neither can He act there, and do in it what He pleases, unless it be left vacant to Him."
Suffering
- p. 41, loc. 492: "I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but I pray God earnestly that He would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases."