Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, born Nicolas Herman (c. 1614–1691), was a French Carmelite lay brother. A soldier in the Thirty Years' War, he was wounded, served briefly as a footman and in 1640 entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris, where he worked for the rest of his life in the kitchen and later, when lame, as a sandal maker. He had no learning and wrote no books, but his habit of keeping God continually in mind during ordinary work drew visitors, among them the priest Joseph de Beaufort, who after his death published their conversations and his letters as The Practice of the Presence of God.