Centering Prayer

When I was in graduate school studying religious ethics, the priest at my church asked me how my studies were affecting my faith. I told him I felt as dry and desiccated as a bone. He invited me to join a centering prayer group that he had started at this parish. I count this invitation as one of the four great gifts of my life: life, faith, prayer, and love.

My pastor had been on a 6-month sabbatical at the Trappist monastery at Snowmass, CO, studying with Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the great formulators of the centering prayer method of contemplative prayer. Fr. Thomas tells the story of encountering young people in the 60s and 70s, hungry for a more authentic and mystical experience of God, who were leaving Christianity for eastern religions. Disturbed by this exodus of young people from the church - especially when the Catholic Church has such a rich legacy of mysticism - Fr. Thomas, together with Fr. Basil Pennington and others, developed the method of centering prayer.

Here's how centering prayer works: First, it is important to bear in mind that centering prayer does not replace other forms of prayer, but rather enhances them. In centering we consent to God to be present to and act within us.

The method of centering prayer involves sitting and being silent before God. As we sit we silently invoke a sacred word or phrase (not a mantra). The word can be as simple as "Jesus," "God," "rest," or "peace." A simple phrase can be used, such as the Jesus prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The "word" can even be simply attending to our breathing. We sit in silence with this sacred word, and as we become aware of thoughts, we gently return to the sacred word. We do not try to suppress thoughts. Rather, we let them be and then when we are aware of them, we return to the sacred word. The idea is not to empty our minds of thoughts, but to return our intention back to God when we are distracted by thoughts. As we sit and practice centering, we may experience a profound sense of peace - peace that comes from God's grace and the joy of resting with God.

In the next post, I'll explain why I think centering prayer is important for cultivating moral integrity. In subsequent posts, I'll focus in on the various factors that come into play in connecting prayer with integrity.

Defining Contemplative Prayer

So what exactly is contemplative prayer? Many people will use contemplation and meditation interchangeably and associate both with eastern religion. This can cause a lot of fear and misunderstanding. In fact, Christianity has a deep spiritual history of both meditation and contemplation among saints such as Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross.

I understand meditation and contemplation to be different things. Meditation is prayer in which the mind mulls over and considers deeply the meaning and significance of the focus of the prayer (for example, the content of the prayer or an icon or the blessed sacrament). Contemplation, on the other hand, is silent prayer before God. Contemplation is often achieved by means of meditation. So for example, the Rosary is a popular and traditional form of meditation and can lead to deeper contemplative prayer as one moves from the concentration of the mind upon the mysteries of the Rosary to sitting in deep peace before God - "basking" in God, if you will! Many people experience contemplative prayer spontaneously - without really knowing it by that name. They simply experience it as a deepening of their cognitive prayer.

So there it is - a first brief description of contemplative prayer. In the next blog, I'll talk about a specific method of contemplative prayer called "centering prayer." Until then, for more information on contemplative prayer, take a look at this link. It will also describe centering prayer, which was developed by Fr. Thomas Keating and Fr. Basil Pennington.

Just a final note: If you decide to Google contemplative or centering prayer, be forewarned that you will see some sites that condemn the practice as un-Christian and unscriptural. These sites originate with individuals or groups who don't fully understand that contemplative prayer and centering prayer are spiritual practices steeped in centuries of church history and embraced by many saints through the centuries and by devout Christians and Catholics today.

Contemplative Prayer and Moral Formation

At a meeting today I was asked "How to you get people to do the right thing?" I heaved a sigh. Indeed, that is the $64,000 question. Why do we still read headlines of financial scandal when business ethics has been taught in MBA programs for decades? Why do we continue to make irrational choices that hurt ourselves, other people, and the environment?

It has become clear that the intellectual approach to ethics taught in most American universities only goes so far. What seems to be needed is an approach that integrates the mind and the heart to motivate the will - an approach I especially resonate with since I addressed a good portion of my dissertation to self-integration in the Christian moral philosophies of St. Augustine and H. Richard Niebuhr. That was all very heady; I want now to explore a more integrated approach to self-integration.

I've been a practitioner of contemplative prayer for about 20 years. It may be dangerous to extrapolate universal truths from personal experience, but everyone does, so I will, too. I think contemplative prayer can play an important role in self-integration and hence to the formation of moral integrity. I would like to spend some time investigating this relationship through this blog.

So over the next few posts, I'm going to "think out loud" about contemplative prayer and how it contributes to moral integrity by integrating the self - promoting self-knowledge and, as I call it, "ethics from the inside out." The next post will explain what contemplative prayer is.