Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming in fact, than the experience of God’s presence.

Fr. Thomas Keating

Centering Prayer

Topic: Prayer, Meditation, & Contemplation

Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming in fact, than the experience of God’s presence. That revelation says, as nothing else can, “You are a good person, I created you and I love you.” Divine love brings us into being in the fullest sense of the word. It heals the negative feelings we have about ourselves.

Fr. Thomas Keating

In the heart of the Christian contemplative prayer movement, a vision was breathed into existence by a man named Thomas Keating, a spiritual guide and founding member of Contemplative Outreach. Born in New York City in 1923, he heard the divine whisper and surrendered to the call, entering the Cistercian Order in Valley Falls, Rhode Island in 1944. The depth of his devotion and the breadth of his understanding of the divine soon became evident. Father Keating became Superior of St. Benedict's Monastery of Snowmass, Colorado in 1958, and later, Abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts in 1961. His life echoed the rhythm of the monastic hours, filled with the sweet labor of prayer, reflection, and service.

The heart of Father Keating's calling was a desire to restore the contemplative dimension of Christianity - the deep, abiding intimacy with God that transcends words and touches the soul. This desire was the seed that grew into Contemplative Outreach, an international network that seeks to weave contemplative practice into the fabric of everyday life. Father Keating became a beacon, guiding countless souls into a deeper understanding of their faith and a closer relationship with God. Through his work, he not only helped to shape the Christian contemplative prayer movement, but he also became one of its principal architects and teachers.

In 1981, Father Keating returned to the simplicity and solitude of Snowmass, Colorado, a mountain community of just over a dozen monks. Here, in the silence of the mountains, he continued his life's work. Father Keating's journey in this world ended gently. On October 25, 2018, at 10:07pm, at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, he offered his final letting go of the body. Yet, his influence continues to echo in the silent prayers of those who have learned from him, and through the continued work of Contemplative Outreach. In this way, Father Keating's voice remains a resonant, guiding force in the Christian Centering Prayer movement.

(1923-2018) Christianity
Centering Prayer, Centering Heart

Keating, Thomas. Foundations for Centering Prayer: Open Mind, Open Heart ; Invitation to Love ; The Mystery of Christ. Continuum, 2002, p. 66.

Fr. Thomas Keating

Theme: Prayer

The Centering Prayer Movement

Father Thomas Keating… continues to be a prominent voice in the Christian Centering Prayer movement through the organization he founded, Contemplative Outreach, an international network committed to renewing the contemplative dimension of the Gospel in daily life.

Although the Centering Prayer movement did not officially take off until the late seventies, Fr. Thomas had been interested in the mystical roots of Christianity since the early 1940s while a student at Yale, where his entire Roman Catholic worldview was shaken by a freshman philosophy class. While studying Thomas Aquinas’s Catena Aurea, a line-by-line exposition of the four Gospels, Fr. Thomas had a sudden intuition of the importance of Scripture as spiritual metaphor—a metaphor pointing to the possibility for all men and women to experience a direct union with the Divine through spiritual practice.

One such example of Scripture—Matthew 6:6, where Jesus says, “If you want to pray, enter your inner room, lock the door and pray to your Father in secret. Your Father, in secret, will reward you”—became the rallying cry of the Desert Fathers of the third and fourth centuries who further developed the practice of “pure prayer,” named for its ability to circumvent thought to rest directly in the presence of God.

The contemporary form of centering prayer was initially developed during Fr. Thomas’s tenure as abbot at St. Joseph’s, where he was inspired by the Second Vatican Council’s call for spiritual renewal in the Catholic Church. Fr. Thomas would soon seek ways to keep young Catholics from leaving the Church in search of more contemplative—and Eastern—paths.

With the help of Fr. Thomas and other Christian contemplatives like Thomas Merton, Fr. John Main, and Fr. Basil Pennington, the movement struck an obvious chord, drawing thousands of Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, and others to workshops and retreats, especially the ten-day retreats at St. Benedict’s, which often fill up a year in advance.

Interreligious Meditative Practices

It helped that Fr. Thomas also had an unusually open-minded attitude towards the meditative practices of other traditions and studied with spiritual teachers from a variety of Hindu and Buddhist lineages, for this led to the creation of the Snowmass Interreligious Conference in 1982, where teachers from diverse paths met regularly to compare notes and evaluate the successes and failures of their respective practices. Other organizations graced by the presence of Fr. Thomas include the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (which sponsors exchanges between the monks and nuns of every religion), and the International Committee for Peace Council.

—Fr. Thomas Keating [Open Mind, Open Heart (Contemplative Outreach International)].

Additional Thomas Keating Quotes

“An important part of response to divine love, once it has been received, is to pass it on to our neighbor in a way that is appropriate in the present moment.”

—Fr. Thomas Keating [Open Mind, Open Heart] P. 103.

“The modern world lies under a pervasive sense of anguish, of being abandoned, or at least experiencing God as absent. Yet events that seem to turn our lives upside down and inside out are part of God’s redemptive plan, not only for us, but for the world in which we live. God may be preparing a great awakening for the world, if God can find enough people to cooperate in this mysterious plan.”

—Fr. Thomas Keating [Contemplative Outreach International].

Centering Prayer

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