The Practice of the Presence of God

About this book

Four conversations and fifteen letters from a Carmelite lay brother who spent thirty years in a monastery kitchen and claimed he knew God as well among the pots and pans as on his knees. Collected and published after his death by Joseph de Beaufort.

About Brother Lawrence

Nicholas Herman of Lorraine (c. 1614-1691) was a soldier, then a footman, who was admitted as a lay brother among the barefooted Carmelites in Paris in 1666 and took the name Lawrence of the Resurrection. He was assigned to the kitchen, work he disliked, and made it the place where he learned a continual, unforced attention to God.

Text from Project Gutenberg #13871; in the public domain.

Contents

1. Preface
2. First Conversation
3. Second Conversation
4. Third Conversation
5. Fourth Conversation
6. First Letter
7. Second Letter
8. Third Letter
9. Fourth Letter
10. Fifth Letter
11. Sixth Letter
12. Seventh Letter
13. Eighth Letter
14. Ninth Letter
15. Tenth Letter
16. Eleventh Letter
17. Twelfth Letter
18. Thirteenth Letter
19. Fourteenth Letter
20. Fifteenth Letter