Staying in God’s presence and placing ourselves in God’s presence are, to my mind, two different things.  In order to place ourselves in His presence we have to withdraw our soul from every other object and make it attentive to that presence at this very moment….But once we are there, we remain there, as long as either our intellect or our will is active in regard to God.  We look either at him or at something else for love of Him; or, not looking at anything at all, we speak to Him; or again, without either looking at Him or speaking to Him, we just stay there where He has placed us, like a statue in its niche.  And if while we are there, we also have some sense that we belong to God and that He is our All, then we must certainly thank Him for this.

If a statue that had been placed in a niche in some room had the ability to speak and were asked “Why are you there? it would answer, “Because my master, the sculptor, has put me here.”  “Why don’t you move about?’  “Because he wants me to be perfectly still.”  “What use are you there?  What do you gain by staying like this?”  “I’m not here for my own benefit, but to serve and obey the will of my master.”  “But you don’t see him.”  “No, but he sees me and is pleased that I am here where he has put me.”  “But wouldn’t you like to be able to move about and to get closer to him?”  “No, not unless he ordered me to.”  “Isn’t there anything at all that you want then?”  “No because I am where my master put me, and all my happiness lies in pleasing him.”  –St Francis de Sales letter to St Jane de Chantal

St Peter statue Venice church St Mary Assumption