June 10

Live In Peace, Pray Continually

Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:12-18    

The apostle Paul’s admonition to “live at peace with each other,” to “pray continually,” and to “give thanks in all circumstances” is a high standard that is difficult to attain. Indeed, in a world with so much strife and so many distractions and disappointments, these exhortations often seem to be out of reach to the ordinary Christian. Yet, they are standards to seek and standards that we can sometimes attain more easily when we see them incorporated into the character of another. The life of Nicholas Herman—better known as Brother Lawrence—is one such example.

He has been all but forgotten in history, and not surprisingly so. He was an obscure lay brother in a seventeenth-century Paris monastery. For forty years he worked in the kitchen preparing food and washing pots and pans. He was “discovered” by M. de Beaufort, a church administrator, who was astonished by his consistent outward testimony of the love and peace of God. “His very countenance was edifying,” wrote Beaufort, “such a sweet and calm devotion, appearing in it as could not but affect the beholder.”

In one of Brother Lawrence’s rare letters he wrote, “Were I a preacher, I should preach above all other things, the practice of the presence of God: Were I a teacher, I should advise all the world to it; so necessary do I think it, and so easy.”

His testimony was well—known to those around him, according to Beaufort: “As he proceeded in his work he continued his familiar conversation with his Maker, imploring His grace, and offering to Him all his actions. When he had finished, 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, and continued his exercise of the presence of God as if he had never deviated from it.”

But how could he “practice the presence of God” in the midst of chaos? “That time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer,” he told Beaufort, “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 tranquility as if I were upon knees at the blessed sacrament.” ¹⁰