Lent 32

Here are a few conversations with Brother Lawrence (a french-german friar 1610-1691)
From Practicing the Presence of God, a pamphlet created by his letters after his death.

--parts of a conversation with Brother Lawrence an archbishop recounted:

He [Brother Lawrence] said 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. This trouble of mind had lasted four years during
which time he had suffered much.
Finally he reasoned: I did not engage in a religious life but for the love of God.
I have endeavored to act only for Him. 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.
From that time on Brother Lawrence lived his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.
He placed his sins between himself and God to tell Him that he did not deserve
His favors yet God still continued to bestow them in abundance.

-- part of Brother Lawrence's letter to a superior:

"In conversation some days ago a devout person told me the spiritual life
was a life of grace, which begins with servile fear, which is increased
by hope of eternal life, and which is consummated by pure love; that
each of these states had its different steps, by which one arrives at
last at that blessed consummation.

I have not followed these methods at all. On the contrary, I
instinctively felt they would discourage me. Instead, at my entrance
into religious life, I took a resolution to give myself up to God as
the best satisfaction I could make for my sins and, for the love of Him,
to renounce all besides."