The Presence of God

- St Frances de Sales

To remain in the presence of God and to place oneself in the presence of God are two different things. To place our­selves in his presence, we must withdraw our souls from all other objects and make ourselves attentive to his presence.

After we have placed ourselves in his presence, we can keep ourselves there by the action of our will or intellect: by either looking upon God, or looking upon something else for the love of him, or not looking at anything but instead speaking to him, or neither looking at him nor speaking to him but simply remaining where he has placed us, like a statue in its niche. And when, to this simple act of remaining there is joined some sentiment that we be­long to God and that he is our all, then we ought to give earnest thanks for his goodness.

If a statue in a niche in the middle of a room were able to speak, and we were to ask it, “Why are you there?,” it would reply, “Because my master the sculptor placed me here.”

“But why do you not move?”

“Because he wishes me to remain immobile.”

“But what use do you serve there? What does it profit you to remain there in this way?”

“It is not to serve myself that I exist, but to serve and to obey the will of my master.”

“But him you cannot see.”

“No,” says the statue, “but he sees me and takes plea­sure that I am where he has placed me.”

“But would you not like to be able to move so that you could be nearer to him?”

“No, not unless he so commands me.”

“Is there then nothing at all that you desire?”

“No, for I am where my master has placed me, and his good pleasure is the sole delight of my being.”

How good a prayer this is, and how good it is to keep oneself in the presence of God in this way, by holding fast to his will and his good pleasure! Mary Magdalene was a statue in her niche when, without speaking a word or mov­ing, and perhaps without even looking at him, she “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39). When he spoke, she listened. When he stopped speaking, she stopped listening, and yet she remained there.

A little child resting on his mother’s bosom while the two of them sleep is truly in his good and most desirable place, even though she says not a word to him, nor he to her.

How happy we are when we want to love our Lord! Let us then love him, and let us not stop to reckon how little we do for his love, provided that we know that we will never wish to do anything except for his love.

Can we not even say that we remain in the presence of God while we sleep? For we sleep in his sight, at his pleasure, and by his will, and he places us upon our beds like statues in their niches, and when we awaken, we find that he is there, near to us, that he has not budged and neither have we. We are in his presence; it is only our eyes that are shut.