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.