Aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after his trip to Lebanon on December 2, 2025, Leo XIV revealed to journalists the book that has illuminated his spiritual journey for many years. The Practice of the Presence of God, written by the French Carmelite Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, and published in 1692, proposes a path accessible to everyone: living each moment in awareness of God's presence, whether in the kitchen or before the altar.
On December 2, 2025, as he was flying back to Rome from Beirut, Lebanon, Leo XIV spent nearly thirty minutes in conversation with the 82 journalists aboard the plane. When asked a personal question — "Which book should one read to understand who Robert Francis Prevost really is?" — the Pope answered without hesitation: The Practice of the Presence of God, written by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a 17th-century French Carmelite friar declared a Servant of God.
"This has been my spirituality for many years," he confided, referring to this work, which describes a way of "simply giving one's life to God by letting Him guide us." "I trust in God and I share this message with everyone," he added, recalling the "challenges" he has faced in his life, "having lived in Peru during years of terrorism, and having been called to the priesthood in places where I never thought I would be called."
Born in 1614 in Hériménil, Lorraine, Brother Lawrence came to a deep conviction of God's existence during his adolescence. The sight of a bare tree in winter, followed by the vision of that same tree blossoming in spring, awakened in him a powerful love for God. His real name was Nicolas Herman. He first enlisted as a soldier in the troops of the Duke of Lorraine, who was then at war with France. Seriously wounded, he left the military at the age of twenty-one and tried the eremitical life.
Finding no lasting peace there, he became a servant in Paris before entering, at age twenty-six, as a lay brother at the Discalced Carmelite convent on rue de Vaugirard. Under the name Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, he first worked as a cook and later as a cobbler.
Even during his lifetime, Brother Lawrence was known as a great man of prayer, a mystic. What was the secret that continues to inspire Leo XIV daily? The first ten years of his religious life were marked by severe trials. He constantly recalled the sins of his youth and even wondered whether he might be damned.
Struggling with meditation during prayer, he began, during his work, to look upon God as a friend — an intimately present being. The result was immediate. "I found myself suddenly changed," he wrote. "My soul, which until then had always been troubled, felt a deep interior peace, as if it were at its centre and in a place of rest." These words appear in his correspondence published in The Practice of the Presence of God.
Through this profound experience, the brother-cook discovered the secret of contemplation. One does not need to abandon one's work or state in life to find God. As he explains: "Our sanctification does not depend on changing our works, but on doing for God what we ordinarily do for ourselves." And he adds famously: "I turn my little omelette for the love of God…"
Brother Lawrence emphasizes that within the depth of daily work, a true mystical path opens up — one that allows for a great unity of life and a full experience of union with God. This begins with a continual exercise of love, doing everything for the love of God. "We should not grow weary of doing little things for the love of God, who looks not at the greatness of the work, but at the love with which it is done." It continues by learning to live every moment in God's presence.
Long forgotten in France, Brother Lawrence's spirituality has captivated many Christians, particularly in the United States. Certain themes can be found in the writings of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, even though they likely never read him. The path discovered by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection is accessible to everyone — and the Pope, like him, urges us to follow it.
Hortense Leger
This text is a translation of the following article in French: https://fr.aleteia.org/2025/12/03/le-livre-a-lire-pour-vraiment-savoir-qui-est-leon-xiv/