“…make way for grace… break down the banks that hinder it…”

Aside from Saint Augustine, the book that has most shaped Pope Leo, turning a young American priest into the supreme pontiff, is a short collection of letters by a French footman who broke everything and feared that he was damned, so admitted himself to a barefoot monastery in Paris in 1666, expecting the severest discipline, only to find the Lord resting in the centre of his soul, filling him with tranquility and joys so continual, “I can scarce contain them.”

Like a tree stripped of leaves in mid-winter, Brother Lawrence was happy to give-up pleasure to draw nearer to God, knowing flowers would follow, but also avoided scripted prayers and formulaic devotions, making small personal appeals to God continually throughout the day, (“My God, here I am, all devoted to Thee...”) building a deeply personal friendship, more intimate and casual than any conventional Catholic teaching.

In the clatter of the monastery kitchen, or rolling around in a boat in Burgundy, buying casks of wine for his brothers, the Lord in turn responded, conversing with Brother Lawrence incessantly “in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favourite.”

Thoughts rove and wander, but spiritual freedom is not a hard-fought struggle: God is as present to road-builders as to priests serving at the altar and his love is like a current that we try to resist and hinder, but once we put our whole trust in the Lord and make a total surrender, believing beyond doubt in His mercy and perfect goodness, joy pours like a torrent that has found its passage.