The Practice of the Presence of God With Spiritual Maxims

A Christian classic on cultivating intimacy with God through life's everyday tasks.

This enduring classic of devotion consists of the letters and recorded conversations of a simple seventeenth-century lay brother who, through the most ordinary of activities, was able to achieve a profound intimacy with God. At any moment and in any circumstance, he taught, we can “practice the presence of God”—by thinking on Him, loving Him, and offering up our daily tasks as acts of worship. This volume also includes Brother Lawrence’s “Spiritual Maxims,” a summary of his teachings in the form of short aphorisms and sayings.

BROTHER LAWRENCE of the Resurrection (ca. 1611–1691), born Nicholas Herman, spent most of his life serving as a kitchen hand and errand boy at the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Paris.