Guest Post: The Practice of the Presence of God

Walther Cantu Explains

Walther Cantu

of

Peregrino

has generously offered to share his reflections on Brother Lawrence’s work, “The Practice of the Presence of God”. Walther reached out after seeing my Collaboration Page, and he felt he had an article suitable for the audience of the Peasant Times-Dispatch.

What Walther did not realize is that Brother Lawrence is part of the Peasantly Pantheon which inspired the Peasant Life. Brother Lawrence’s work has helped

Hambone

and I to further understand the raw basics of our Faith in practice, which is what we hope to share through this publication.

Walther’s insights, derived from Brother Lawrence, are timeless and essential to all of us in our faith life, and I think you will get a lot out of them. Please enjoy!

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We can pray in many different ways. There’s vocal prayer, the rosary, and the divine mercy chaplet and good examples, we can meditate on the word of God by doing lectio divina, or we can pray the liturgy of the hours at set times of the day. All of these forms of prayer are great ways to grow in our interior life, which is the practice of living in the presence of God.

But what if you are like me, who has difficulty carving time for prayer at a specific time of day but wants to grow in intimacy with God?

A pocket-size book that has helped me with this is Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God." Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was a 17th-Century Carmelite Friar who lived in a monastery in France. Was he a hermit, who prayed all day, didn't eat or drink, and levitated? Not quite. People considered him clumsy and inept. Yet, he was able to achieve intimacy with God amid mundane activities like making soup in the monastery's kitchen.

The key to the practice of the presence of God is knowing that leads to love. Let me elaborate. Before I married my wife, we met and started getting to know each other. The more I got to know her, the more I fell in love with her. When two people are in love, there aren’t enough hours in a day to talk and find out everything about the other person.

To know God, we must think of Him. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” We don’t have to go anywhere to find God since He dwells in us. However, we should strive to have an intimate, friendly conversation with Him daily.

We can go straight to Him in real time as situations unfold, especially in times of trial or temptation. Mental prayer can be done while driving, cooking, folding laundry, etc. It opens the possibility of praying without ceasing. I’m not trying to say devotions are bad or unnecessary. I’m just highlighting something that might be useful for some.

Like anything worth doing, this will require effort. This is why it’s called a practice, something we do repeatedly in hopes of getting better the more we do it. It might feel weird at first, but it’ll become second nature as we grow in attentiveness and awareness of God.

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If you enjoyed this essay, you can read more of

Walther Cantu

’s work at his Substack,

Peregrino

, where currently he is working on writing 40 essays before he turns 40. His essays are heartfelt, insightful, and very well written. Go and subscribe! You won’t regret it!

Thank you, Walther, for this incredible essay!

God bless you!