The Practice of the Presence of God: The Complete Conversations, Letters, and Spiritual Maxims — A New Translation from the French

One of the best-loved spiritual classics of all time — now complete, and freshly translated from the original French.

Three centuries ago, a clumsy, unlettered lay brother spent his days in the kitchen of a Paris monastery — and there discovered one of the simplest and most enduring paths to God ever written down. Brother Lawrence had no method and no system. He had only a habit: to turn his heart, gently and continually, toward a God he believed was always near — at the stove no less than in the chapel.

His teaching has guided and consoled readers of every tradition ever since. Its promise is as ordinary as it is astonishing: that the presence of God is not reserved for cloisters or mystics, but is open to anyone, in the middle of the most ordinary life.

A complete edition, not an abridgment. Most popular versions carry only part of the classic text. This new translation restores the whole of it, in clear, modern English:

• The four Conversations recorded by his friend Joseph de Beaufort
• All sixteen Letters — his most personal counsel, closing with his serene deathbed letters
• The Spiritual Maxims, his teaching in its most concentrated form
• The Eulogy and Character of Brother Lawrence — the biographical portrait left out of nearly every English edition
• A new introduction on his life, the Carmelite tradition, and the remarkable story of the book itself

For lovers of the contemplative classics, for anyone seeking a deeper life of prayer in the midst of everyday work, and for those meeting Brother Lawrence for the first time — here is the whole book, as close to his own plain and warm voice as a fresh translation can bring it.