The Practice of the Presence of God | Page 5

giving Him thanks when we have
completed them.
In our conversation with God we should also engage in praising, adoring, and loving Him
incessantly for His infinite goodness and perfection. Without being discouraged on
account of our sins, we should pray for His grace with a perfect confidence, as relying
upon the infinite merits of our Lord. Brother Lawrence said that God never failed
offering us His grace at each action. It never failed except when Brother Lawrence's
thoughts had wandered from a sense of God's Presence, or he forgot to ask His assistance.
He said that God always gave us light in our doubts, when we had no other design but to
please Him.
Our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works. Instead, it depended on
doing that for God's sake which we commonly do for our own. He thought it was
lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves
to certain works which they performed very imperfectly by reason of their human or
selfish regards. The most excellent method he had found for going to God was that of
doing our common business without any view of pleasing men but purely for the love of
God.
Brother Lawrence felt it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to
differ from other times. We are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time
of action, as by prayer in its season. His own prayer was nothing else but a sense of the
presence of God, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine Love.
When the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still
continued with God, praising and blessing Him with all his might. Thus he passed his life
in continual joy. Yet he hoped that God would give him somewhat to suffer when he
grew stronger.
Brother Lawrence said we ought, once and for all, heartily put our whole trust in God,
and make a total surrender of ourselves to Him, secure that He would not deceive us. We
ought not 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. We should not wonder if, in the
beginning, we often failed in our endeavors, but that at last we should gain a habit which
will naturally produce its acts in us without our care and to our exceeding great delight.
The whole substance of religion was faith, hope, and charity. In the practice of these we
become united to the will of God. Everything else is indifferent and to be used as a means
that we may arrive at our end and then be swallowed up by faith and charity. All things
are possible to him who believes. They are less difficult to him who hopes. They are
more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of
these three virtues. The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life,
the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, and as we hope to be through all
eternity.
We must, from time to time, honestly consider and thoroughly examine ourselves. We
will, then, realize that we are worthy of great contempt. Brother Lawrence noted that
when we directly confront ourselves in this manner, we will understand why we are
subject to all kinds of misery and problems. We will realize why we are subject to
changes and fluctuations in our health, mental outlook, and dispositions. And we will,
indeed, recognize that we deserve all the pain and labors God sends to humble us.
After this, we should not wonder that troubles, temptations, oppositions, and
contradictions happen to us from men. We ought, on the contrary, to submit ourselves to
them and bear them as long as God pleases as things highly advantageous to us. The
greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.
Being questioned by one of his own community (to whom he was obliged to open
himself) by what means he had attained such an habitual sense of God, Brother Lawrence
told him that, since his first coming to the monastery, he had considered God as the end
of all his thoughts and desires, as the mark to which they should tend, and in which they
should terminate.
He noted that in the beginning of his novitiate he spent the hours appointed for private
prayer in thinking of God so as to convince his mind and impress deeply upon his heart
the Divine existence. He did this by devout sentiments and submission to the lights