Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Brother Lawrence scrubbed pots in a monastery kitchen three hundred years ago, and people kept coming to ask his secret. It was simple: he talked to God while he worked, the way you talk to a friend standing next to you. He did not wait for church or quiet rooms. His talks and letters were saved in this small book, and it still teaches busy people how to keep company with God all day.
Nicholas Herman, a large, clumsy ex-soldier whose foot had been wounded in the Thirty Years War, entered the Carmelite monastery in Paris as a lay brother and was given Brother Lawrence as his name and the kitchen and the sandal repair as his work. He was famous in the house for one thing: an unbroken, cheerful sense that God was present, which visitors crossed Paris to ask about.
After his death in 1691, the abbé Joseph de Beaufort collected what Lawrence had said to him across years of visits (the four Conversations) and the letters Lawrence had written to nuns and friends (the fifteen Letters). The teaching is one practice, stated a dozen ways: accustom yourself to a continual conversation with God, in work as in prayer, offering each task and returning after every distraction without scolding yourself.
Our text comes from a modern edited edition; its editor's preface is skipped, as the work itself is what has been read for three centuries. The book takes an evening to read and, by all reports, rather longer to do. Its kitchen spirituality, sanctity while peeling potatoes, is why it has never gone out of circulation.
Brother Lawrence was a barefoot Carmelite lay brother who worked in a monastery kitchen in Paris and died in 1691, famous only for how he prayed: he talked with God while washing pots as naturally as in church. After his death his friends gathered his conversations and letters into this little book, which has been teaching ordinary people to practice God's presence in ordinary work ever since.
The first chapter
First Conversation: The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was upon the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, Brother Lawrence received a high view of the Providence and Power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul. 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 the forty years that he had lived since.
Brother Lawrence said he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow who broke everything. He finally decided to enter a monastery thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he would commit, and so he would sacrifice his life with its pleasures to God. But Brother Lawrence said that God had surprised him because he met with nothing but satisfaction in that state.
Brother Lawrence related that we should establish ourselves in a sense of God's Presence by continually conversing with Him. It was a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries. We should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of God which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him.
He said we ought to quicken and enliven our faith. It was lamentable we had so little. Instead of taking faith for the rule of their conduct, men amused themselves with trivial devotions which changed daily. He said that faith was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection. We ought to give ourselves up to God with regard both to things temporal and spiritual and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of His will. Whether God led us by suffering or by consolation all would be equal to a soul truly resigned.
He said we need fidelity in those disruptions in the ebb and flow of prayer when God tries our love to Him. This was the time for a complete act of resignation, whereof one act alone could greatly promote our spiritual advancement.
He said that as far as the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the contrary, he was surprised there were not more considering the malice sinners were capable of. For his part, he prayed for them. But knowing that God could remedy the mischief they did when He pleased, he gave himself no further trouble.
Brother Lawrence said to arrive at such resignation as God requires, we should carefully watch over all the passions that mingle in spiritual as well as temporal things. God would give light concerning those passions to those who truly desire to serve Him.
At the end of this first conversation Brother Lawrence said that if my purpose for the visit was to sincerely discuss how to serve God, I might come to him as often as I pleased and without any fear of being troublesome. If this was not the case, then I ought visit him no more.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Author died 1691. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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