The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 26
Summary of Reverend Graeme Watson's "Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 06 June 2006

Brother Lawrence: “The People’s Mystic”?

Sources:
La Practique de la Presence de Dieu, with introduction and notes by L. Van den Bossche (Bruges, 1934)
Writings and Conversations on the Practice of the Presence of God,
Critical Edition by Conrad de Meester OCD, translated by Salvatore Sciurba (ICS Publications, Washington DC, 1994
The Practice of the Presence of God, translated Donald Attwater, Springfield, Illinois: Templegate, 1974; also Orchard Books, Extra series, 3; 1926, and with introduction by JJ Delaney,(Garden City, NY, 1977)
Also published by Hodder & Stoughton (Religious Classics series); and by Bantam Books, and others in last 10 years.
www.carmelite.com/saints/lawrence
www.carmelite.org/laycarmel/lawrence
www.virtualsalt.com

His Life

1611(1614?)-1691

Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite lay brother. After serving as a soldier, and for a brief period as a hermit, he entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris in 1649, at the age of 26. There he was given charge of the kitchen. After 15 years, for health reasons he moved from the kitchen, becoming a cobbler, making and repairing the only footwear that could be worn by the Brothers- their sandals. After his death in 1691, his writings were collected together by after his death in 2 slim volumes: Maximes Spirituelles (1692) and Moeurs et Entretiens du Frere Lawrence.

Brother Lawrence is one of those people who was for many years practically forgotten in his own country, yet he was translated and retranslated abroad. In France people are still surprised to hear that his Practice of the Presence of God is described as famous throughout the world. Yet in his own lifetime he had an amazing influence. Many learned people, religious and churchmen had him in great esteem, His contemporary biographer wrote. It was even said that “all Paris” venerated him. Part of the reason for his neglect in France may be that he became something of a football in the famous and bitter debates on the subject of Mysticism which took place between Fenelon and Bossuet, both leading bishops. Both sides quoted Brother Lawrence in defence of their positions. Eventually Fenelon was condemned as heretical, and as a result Brother Lawrence’s work, though never condemned, was somehow eclipsed. It was left very often to non-Roman Catholics to publish and disseminate his writings.

I have in my hand an English edition, published in 1904, which includes in its preface an extensive quotation from Brother Lawrence by Edward W Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, which begins: “A very holy person once said ‘That the most excellent method he had found of going to God was that of doing our common business as far as we are able purely for the love of God.” That is a very useful little summary of Brother Lawrence’s essential teaching.

In the twentieth century there have been a number of translations of his writings, and I doubt whether he has ever gone out of print during the last 100 years. His writings have actually crossed all boundaries. Aldous Huxley wrote: “He has enjoyed a kind of celebrity in circles otherwise completely uninterested in mental prayer or spiritual exercises.” He has attracted many seekers of God through the depths of his human experience, his common sense, and his engaging disposition

Brother Lawrence was born Nicholas Herman in 1614 in a village near Luneville in the Lorraine district of France. His parents Dominic and Louise were said to be “very fine people”, but despite their son’s intelligence they did not posses the means to give him more than an elementary education. It is not known whether he had any brothers or sisters. The first thing we know for certain about his youth, and this is extremely important, is that at the age of 18 he received a sudden vision of the grandeur and mystery of God:

He recalled it later to his biographer on 3rd August 1666 in these words:

“That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, ad considering that within a little time, the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received high view of the Providence and Power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in above forty years that he had lived since” (First Conversation)

This moment of vision of God’s creative activity in the natural world marks his first conversion.

However, Nicolas did not immediately respond to this vision by entering into a formal religious life. He chose instead, perhaps surprisingly, military service during the troubled period of the Thirty Years War, in which nearly all the major powers of continental Europe were embroiled. At one point Nicolas was arrested. Under suspicion of being a spy for the enemy, he was threatened with death, but fortunately he was able to establish his ignorance. He rejoined his regiment but was wounded in 1635, and returned home. Later in life he would deplore the “disorders of his youth”, and the “sins of his past life”, and he was, he declared, “determined to rectify his past conduct”.

After a period of heart-searching, he decided to try to live the eremetical life, and joined another man living in solitude. However, this attempt was a failure, and he moved to Paris, where he secured a job as a valet, a gentleman’s gentleman.
But this time was a prelude to what became his most serious decision. In 1640, at the age of 26, he entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites on the Rue Vaugirard in Paris as a lay brother. After 2 months he received the brown habit of the Carmelites, and took the name Lawrence of the Resurrection.

Though Nicolas now Laurence had found his life-long spiritual home, his struggles were only just beginning. He was deeply disappointed in the training and tasks he was given. He reproached the Lord: “You have tricked me!” He feared that the brothers would “skin him alive” for his awkwardness and his faults. Right from the first he was to say that “he was a great awkward fellow who broke everything.” (1st Conversation). Yet at the same time, he claimed “to have met with nothing but satisfaction” (ibid).

Nevertheless, he entered a dark night that was going to continue for some 10 years, of which the last four were the worst. He feared that he would be lost, for he had the impression as he said that “I was damning myself, that there was no salvation for me at all.” On the one hand, he was experiencing God intimately, but on the other hand, his desire to please God in everything was the source of his distress. So he wrote: “The fear that I had not given myself to God as I desired, my sins always present and before my eyes, and the great graces God gave me were the sum and substance of all my sufferings.” In this struggle he had only one very ordinary, yet powerful, weapon – his faith. “It seemed to me that creatures, reason, and even God himself were against me, and that faith alone was on my side”. (2nd Letter) His biographer comments here that by faith alone Lawrence means that it is faith alone which apprehends God as infinite and incomprehensible, and not as He can be conceived by human ideas. All distinct notions of God are unsatisfactory, because they are perceived to be unworthy of God.

The turning point for Lawrence came paradoxically when he came to accept that he might well spend the rest of his life in this troubled state.
When I thought of nothing but to end my days in these troubles (which did not at all diminish the trust I had in God, and which served only to increase my faith), I found myself changed all at once; and my soul, which till that time, was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her centre and place of rest (2nd Letter)

This is to jump ahead, however. After 2 years novitiate, Lawrence made his solemn vows on 14 August 1642. He was now a full lay brother, and for the next 15 years he was in charge of the kitchen for a community that usually numbered about 100 brothers, including many young novices. However, as time went on, Lawrence suffered more and more from a kind of sciatic gout that made him limp: a condition that might well have been worsened as a result of the war-wound he had received. As the kitchen work became more difficult for him, he was next given the job of being in charge of the sandal-shop where he could sit, and not have to run about.

But he was still not excused heavy jobs. For example, he was sometimes sent to buy the wine for the community, a most unwelcome commission for him, partly because he had no natural business ability, but also because he was lame. He mentions a long 500 mile journey south to the Auvergne, probably a three week trip one year. The following year he made another journey by river for the same purpose to Burgundy, so difficult for him that “crippled in one leg, he could only get about on the boat by rolling over the barrels”. Yet both times, he writes, God never failed to help him when he asked for it. (2nd Conversation).

Such trips of course brought him into contact with the outside world. But the monastery was not an entirely closed institution. Workers came, beggars begged at the door, there were constant visitors to church and the parlour, where counsel would be sought. The lay brothers were always being sent out on errands, often begging for funds to help the community.

So like other lay brothers Lawrence was in pretty constant touch with all kinds of people, from every walk of society, from the least influential to the most. Bishop Fenelon visited Lawrence shortly before he died, and wrote as follows:
”Brother Lawrence was rough by nature but refined in grace. This mixture (of roughness and refinement) was appealing, and revealed God present in him. I saw him, and there is a place in the book where the author, without mentioning me my name, briefly related a fine conversation I had with him on death, and even though he was very sick, he made me very happy.”

Again his biographer writes: “Once you got past his rough exterior you discovered unusual wisdom, a freedom beyond the reach of the ordinary lay brother, an insight far beyond what you expect”.

At the same time, it is clear that like many of the best teachers, Lawrence spoke little, and was more often silent. A Carmelite community is one that encourages a profound silence The lay brothers had a low place in the scheme of things. They occupied the last place in the house, below even the cleric novices. Except for rare occasions they didn’t attend the regular choir offices in church, but instead simply recited a certain number of “Our Fathers”. In the morning they served at the priest’s masses, but because of their other duties they couldn’t attend the morning and evening hours of silent prayer or meditation. Instead, they had to undertake their prayers at other times, very often at night.

Such were the outward circumstances of Lawrence’s life for over 30 years. However, as he grew older his physical sufferings increased. His sciatic gout degenerated into an ulcer in the leg, giving him intense pain. He was seriously ill three times during the last years of his life. When he recovered the first time he said to the doctor: “Doctor, your remedies have worked too well for me. You have only delayed my happiness!” Three weeks before he died h wrote “Goodbye, I hope to see him soon” and six days before the end came “I hope for the merciful grace of seeing him in few days.” He was lucid till the end, and died at the age of 77, almost a century after St John of the Cross.

(These notes are largely taken and adapted from the Carmelite web-site, from Conrad de Meester’s book noted above).

Lawrence’s essential teaching:

Brother Lawrence’s writings are much more than teaching a constant devotion to God or unceasing prayer – though it includes those things. It is also a book about wholeness or integration- of mind and faith, life and worship, thought and prayer, the physical and the spiritual

First Conversation:
F our principles of integration to bear in mind:
1. One of the ways in which we can integrate faith and reason is to contemplate the physical world in terms of an overarching meaning and purpose. ( e.g. the barren tree)
2. When we offer up our whole life without residue to God.
3. When we try to establish ourselves in the presence of God at every point in our life – i.e. continuous prayer.
4. When we make an intellectual and emotional commitment to faith, as well as a spiritual one.

Second Conversation:
1. Love is unconditional. Regardless of whether he was lost or saved, Lawrence says that he tried to live for God.
2. Seek God for his own sake. Any task can be undertaken for the love of God
3. Formal stiff prayers are rejected – what is commended is a conversation with God as with a friend
4. All times are times of prayer
5 Wandering minds are a problem both for busy and idle people.

Third Conversation:
1. God is honoured by the trust we put in him and fulfils it with graces.
2 Lawrence finds himself closer to God during his ordinary activities than in religious exercises. Also he comments that many people get stuck among systems and particular devotions. Virtue consists rather in operating by rules that go beyond the self – either by following ideals or a focus on loving and honouring God.

Fourth Conversation:
1. We need only to realize that God is close to us, and to turn to him at every moment to ask for his help to learn his will in doubtful things.
2. We are equally bound to be united to God by work (compare the Benedictine rule that ORARE EST LABORARE: LABORARE EST ORARE).
3. Even the smallest things done for the love of God are important. God looks at the love rather than the work.

First Letter
Perseverance in our intention to serve God
Second Letter
Worship God for his sake alone and not from what we can get from our worship
Third Letter
Devotions have no value in themselves unless they draw us closer to God
Fourth Letter
We can worship God anywhere by making “a chapel of our heart”
Fifth Letter
By keeping ourselves always in God’s presence, we can fuse our will with God’s will
Sixth Letter
We should search for God without wearying
Seventh Letter
We should take time to think about who we are “to enter into ourselves”, and see what is there
Ninth Letter
We must know before we can love; and to know God we must often think about him
Fifteenth Letter
The more we know God, the more we desire to know him. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be the greater will be our love: and if our love of God were great we should love him equally in pains and pleasures. (written just a few days before he died).
(based on notes by Robert Harris, www.Virtualsalt.com)