Brother Lawrence: Did He Find God in the Kitchen?

Chapters

1. 0:00 Did he find God in the kitchen?
2. 0:35 Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine
3. 1:25 The footman who broke everything
4. 1:49 The tree in winter
5. 2:08 Who wrote it down
6. 2:51 The kitchen: a great aversion
7. 4:21 Four years afraid of being damned
8. 5:01 Ten years of suffering
9. 5:38 The dates do not close
10. 6:07 The famous sentence
11. 7:01 Collected from other accounts
12. 8:34 The Character: in his own voice
13. 9:42 The practice of the presence of God
14. 12:42 The reading: a letter at eighty
15. 14:43 What the letter does not say
16. 15:16 February 1691
17. 16:11 Did he find God in the kitchen?
18. 16:38 Next: Moses the Ethiopian

Transcript

Did he find God in the kitchen?

Brother Lawrence: did he find God in the kitchen? Ask almost anyone, and they will tell you he was a cook who prayed among the pots and pans. We went looking for those words in his book. They are not there.

So what did he really say about his kitchen? We read his conversations and letters in two English translations, from 1895 and 1906, side by side, and followed his most famous sentence to the three places where it is printed. What we found is stranger than the story, and kinder.

Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine 0:35

Start with the man. The book calls him Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine, a lowly and unlearned man. Before he was a monk, the preface says, he had been a footman and a soldier. In 1666 he was admitted a lay brother among the barefooted Carmelites at Paris, and was afterward known as Brother Lawrence.

We do not know where he fought, or whether he did. The soldier is in the preface, never in his own words. A biographer of 1919 says he was wounded, and badly. The first sources say one thing only: that he was lame. But we can see the world he came from. Jacques Callot, born in Lorraine, etched in 1633 a series of eighteen plates he called the Miseries and Misfortunes of War.

The footman who broke everything 1:25

In his own words, he had been a footman to a Monsieur Fieubert, the treasurer, and a great awkward fellow who broke everything. He wanted to enter a monastery, he said, thinking he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures. But God had disappointed him: he met with nothing but satisfaction.

The tree in winter 1:49

The turning point came earlier, at eighteen. In the winter, he said, 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, he received a high view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul.

Who wrote it down 2:08

We know this because someone wrote it down. The first time I saw Brother Lawrence, the writer begins, was upon the third of August, 1666. The English preface says the conversations are supposed to have been written by a Monsieur Beaufort, grand vicar to the Cardinal de Noailles. Four conversations survive, dated from August 1666 to November 1667.

The convent of the barefooted Carmelites stood at the edge of Paris. Jean Marot engraved the church and gave it this title: the church of the Barefooted Carmelites, at the end of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. That is where a lay brother spent the rest of his life.

The kitchen: a great aversion 2:51

Now the kitchen. In the second conversation, he says that in his business in the kitchen, he had found everything easy, during fifteen years that he had been employed there. But read the words in the parenthesis. The kitchen, he says, was a business to which he had naturally a great aversion.

So how did he find it easy? By accustoming himself to do everything there for the love of God, he says, and with prayer, upon all occasions, for His grace to do his work well. He did not like the work. He changed what he did it for.

He was not only the cook. He had been lately sent into Burgundy, he says, to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks.

Still, he gave himself no uneasiness about it. He said to God that it was His business he was about, and afterward found it very well performed. He was pleased, he said, when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts.

We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, he told his chronicler, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. And if we fail at first, we should not wonder: in the end we shall gain a habit.

Four years afraid of being damned 4:21

But the kitchen is not the hard part of this story. In the same conversation he says he had been long troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned. All the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary. The trouble lasted four years, during which time he had suffered much.

And this is how he argued with himself. I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, he reasoned, and whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him.

Ten years of suffering 5:01

In a letter he gives a longer count. I must tell you, he writes, that for the first ten years I suffered much. The apprehension that I was not devoted to God as I wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind. It seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and God Himself were against me, and faith alone for me.

Then, he says, when I thought of nothing but to end my days in these troubles, 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 center and place of rest.

The dates do not close 5:38

A careful reader will notice a problem with the dates. He entered the order in 1666, yet in the conversations dated 1666 and 1667 he already speaks of fifteen years in the kitchen. The books do not explain it, and we will not smooth it over. The year of his birth is no firmer: the prefaces say he died at eighty, and later writers give a birth between 1611 and about 1614.

The famous sentence 6:07

Now the sentence. Here it is, as the body of the 1895 book prints it, at the very end of the conversations. The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

Clatter. We said clutter ourselves, at the end of the last episode. That is the word in the introduction to the same book, written by Hannah Whitall Smith and dated London, 1897. The page it quotes says clatter.

The same introduction has another sentence that travels. A kitchen and an altar were as one to him. It is a beautiful line. It is the introducer's, not his.

Collected from other accounts 7:01

And the page is not what it seems. The famous sentence closes a section that opens with a footnote: the particulars which follow are collected from other accounts of Brother Lawrence. So it is not from the four conversations. It is a summary by someone else, of the man at work.

That summary is also where the book says, in so many words, that he was cook to the society. It says that before he began, he considered what his office required, and when and how each thing was to be done. And that when he began, he said: O my God, since Thou art with me, and I must now apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech Thee to grant me the grace to continue in Thy presence.

And when he had finished, the summary says, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty. If he found well, he returned thanks to God; if otherwise, he asked pardon, and without being discouraged, he set his mind right again. Thus, said he, by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, I am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.

The same pages describe how he looked at work. In the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, it was observed, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit.

The Character: in his own voice 8:34

The third place is a different book: the Character, a portrait of Brother Lawrence by the same chronicler, printed in 1907 with his maxims. There the sentence is in his own voice. This is what he once told me, the chronicler writes. For me the time of action does not differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are together calling for as many different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as when upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

A few lines before it, the chronicler gives the nearest thing to pots and pans. We can do little things for God, Lawrence says. I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before Him, who has given me grace to work. Afterwards I rise happier than a king.

No pots. No pans, in the plural. A cake frying on a pan. The phrase everyone repeats is a fair summary of this. It is just not his.

The practice of the presence of God 9:42

And the name of the practice? It is in a letter, the fifth in the 1895 book. Were I a preacher, he writes, I should, above all other things, preach the practice of the presence of God; and were I a director, I should advise all the world to do it, so necessary do I think it, and so easy, too.

His first letter explains how he came to it. Having found in many books different methods of going to God, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly God's.

What he settled on he calls a simple attention, a general fond regard to God. He kept himself there, and called his mind back as often as he found it had wandered. Our sanctification, he told his chronicler, did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for God's sake which we commonly do for our own.

He did not claim to keep it unbroken. In the third conversation he says that when sometimes he had not thought of God for a good while, he did not disquiet himself for it. After acknowledging his wretchedness to God, he returned to Him with so much the greater trust in Him as he had found himself wretched through forgetting Him.

In a letter he describes his set hours of prayer as a continuation of the same exercise. Sometimes I consider myself there, he writes, as a stone before a carver, whereof he is to make a statue; presenting myself thus before God, I desire Him to form His perfect image in my soul, and make me entirely like Himself.

Wandering thoughts, he writes to a correspondent, are nothing new: you are not the only one. Hold yourself in prayer before God like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. If the mind wanders, do not much disquiet yourself for that. Trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to recollect it.

He did not give up the set times of prayer. He retired to pray, he said, according to the directions of his superior. But he did not want such retirement, nor ask for it, because his greatest business did not divert him from God.

Some said his way was a delusion, and he knew it. I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and self-love, he writes. I confess that it is a holy inactivity. Yet I cannot bear that this should be called delusion, because the soul which thus enjoys God desires herein nothing but Him. If this be delusion in me, it belongs to God to remedy it.

The last five letters in the 1895 book are written to someone in pain. I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains, he writes, but I pray God earnestly that He would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases.

The reading: a letter at eighty 12:42

Among his letters there is one to a friend near sixty-four, written when he was almost eighty. Here, now, a few paragraphs from it, in the 1895 translation, without comment.

He requires no great matters of us: a little remembrance of Him from time to time. A little adoration. Sometimes to pray for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, and sometimes to return Him thanks for the favors He has given you, and still gives you, in the midst of your troubles, and to console yourself with Him the oftenest you can.

Lift up your heart to Him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company; the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to Him. You need not cry very loud; He is nearer to us than we are aware of.

It is not necessary for being with God to be always at church. We may make an oratory of our heart wherein to retire from time to time to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less. He knows what we can do.

Let us begin, then. Perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage. We have but little time to live; you are near sixty-four, and I am almost eighty. Let us live and die with God. Sufferings will be sweet and pleasant to us while we are with Him; and the greatest pleasures will be, without Him, a cruel punishment to us. May He be blessed for all. Amen.

Accustom yourself, then, by degrees thus to worship Him, to beg His grace, to offer Him your heart from time to time in the midst of your business, even every moment, if you can. Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules, or particular forms of devotion, but act with a general confidence in God, with love and humility.

What the letter does not say 14:43

Read it again, and notice what it does not say. It does not say the kitchen is holy. It does not say that nothing else is needed. It says that he knows what we can do, some more, some less, and that we should begin.

In the last episode, a pilgrim in Jerusalem wrote that no one demands how much each should do, but each does as he can. About thirteen centuries later, in a Paris convent, a lay brother wrote almost the same thing. He knows what we can do.

February 1691 15:16

His last letter in the book ends with a hope: I hope from His mercy the favor to see Him within a few days. A note adds that he took to his bed two days after, and died within the week. The Character gives the day: Monday, the twelfth of February, 1691, at nine o'clock in the morning, without any pain or struggle, and without losing in the slightest the use of any of his faculties.

The French preface of 1692, as the 1906 edition prints it, says that providence seems to have desired that the eyes of men should be cast chiefly on Brother Lawrence. The 1895 English preface says the book had, within a short time, gone through repeated editions. We have not found the French original of his conversations in a scan we are free to show you, so what you have heard is the English of 1895 and 1906, as we read it.

Did he find God in the kitchen?

So did he find God in the kitchen? By his own account, he disliked the kitchen, he feared for four years that he was damned, and he suffered ten before the peace came. The kitchen did not give him God. It was the place where he practiced what he had found.

And the rule he leaves is the one Egeria's fasters had. He knows what we can do. Let us begin.

Next: Moses the Ethiopian 16:38

Next time: Moses the Ethiopian, who the Lausiac History says was the slave of a man in high authority, driven from his house for his thefts, and the captain of a band of seventy thieves, before he fled to a monastery.

Description and sources

Nicholas Herman, of Lorraine, was a footman before he was admitted a lay brother among the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666. The episode reads what he and his chronicler actually wrote. He says the kitchen was a business to which he had naturally a great aversion; that for four years he believed he would be damned; that for the first ten years he suffered much before a profound inward peace came. His most famous sentence, about possessing God in the noise and clatter of his kitchen, is printed in three places: the introduction of the 1895 edition (which says clutter), the closing section of the conversations, which the book itself says was collected from other accounts, and the Character, where he tells it to his chronicler. The pots and pans are not in the texts we read; the cake frying on a pan is. One of his letters, written when he was almost eighty, is read without comment, and it ends where Egeria's rule for the fast ended: he knows what we can do.

PRIMARY SOURCES

• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Fleming H. Revell, copyright 1895), introduction by Hannah Whitall Smith (London, 1897), pp. iii-iv, preface pp. 5-6, Conversations pp. 7-20, Letters pp. 21-44. https://archive.org/details/brotherlawrencep00lawr
• The Practice of the Presence of God, Heart and Life Booklets no. 11 (London: H. R. Allenson, November 1906), preface, dates of the conversations and letters, p. 26. https://archive.org/details/ThePracticeOfThePresenceOfGod
• The Spiritual Maxims of Brother Lawrence, together with The Character by the chronicler of the Conversations (London: H. R. Allenson, 1907), pp. 33-34, 44. https://archive.org/details/spiritualmaximso01lawr
• Septimus Hebert, The Life of Brother Lawrence (London, 1919), cited only for the dates and the wound that later writers give. https://archive.org/details/bwb_C0-ARS-069
• Jacques Callot, Les Misères et les Malheurs de la guerre (1633), Wikimedia Commons, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Les_Mis%C3%A8res_et_les_malheurs_de_la_guerre
• Jean Marot, L'Église des Carmes déchaussés, au bout du Faubourg Saint-Germain, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
• Palladius, Lausiac History, ch. X, in E. A. Wallis Budge, The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers, vol. II (London, 1907). https://archive.org/details/paradiseorgarden01ann

ARCHIVE PLATES — public-domain documents, with author, date, archive and licence.

• Joachim Beuckelaer - 1566 - Wikimedia Commons (2 images) | Public domain
• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Revell, 1895), title page. Internet Archive | public domain
• The Practice of the Presence of God (London: H. R. Allenson, 1906), p. 26. Internet Archive (2 images) | public domain
• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Revell, 1895), p. 5. Internet Archive | public domain
• Wenceslaus Hollar - Unknown date (author lived 1607-1677) - Wikimedia Commons (3 images) | Public domain
• Jacques Callot - 1633 - Wikimedia Commons (5 images) | Public domain
• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Revell, 1895), p. 7. Internet Archive (2 images) | public domain
• Abraham Bosse - circa 1638 - Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

... and 39 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.

Ancient Paths Faith reads the Christian contemplative tradition, East and West, from the primary source: the life, the rule, the letter, the codex.

About the material. Prints, paintings and book pages: Wikimedia Commons, the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnavalet museum and other public collections, all public domain or CC0, credited on screen. Book pages: Internet Archive scans of public-domain editions of 1895, 1906 and 1907. Every diagram is drawn in code from the sources listed. Nothing in this video is AI-generated imagery.

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