Father Thomas Keating

Founder of Centering Prayer

About Thomas Keating

Fr. Keating was born into an upper class family and was raised in New York’s Upper East Side. He was educated along an Ivy League trajectory and eventually attended Yale University. From a very young age he felt an ever deepening spiritual connection to God, and during his sophomore year at Yale he was swept up in a fury of religious awakenings such that he was compelled to transfer to Fordham University where he finished his undergraduate studies at an accelerated pace. Just before his 21st birthday in 1944 much to the chagrin of his family he entered monastic vows at Our Lady of the Valley Trappist Monastery in Rhode Island. As a point of reference Thomas Merton entered the Trappist monastery, the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, outside of Bardstown, Kentucky just a couple of years earlier. In those days, Trappist monasteries were rigorously austere places where the monks took on a rule of life characterized by relatively strict silence, work, prayer, and isolation from dominant culture.


Fr. Keating was a monk for nearly 75 years and his time was spent in two places for the most part. First he lived and served at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, then he helped establish and eventually retired to St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. 


Fr. Keating discovered and developed Centering Prayer in the 1980’s. Centering Prayer is a method of Christian mediation that draws on the 6th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the 14th century work The Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous author, and The Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross among other mystical texts.

About Centering Prayer

The theological basis for Centering Prayer is the indwelling of the Divine in every human being. Perhaps Keating’s most audacious and wonderful one-liner is this, “The fullness of the Holy Trinity dwells within you!”

It is important to note that Centering Prayer is a method not a technique. A technique guarantees an outcome which Centering Prayer decidedly does not offer. A prayer method shows one how to assume an inner stance that makes one receptive to the gift of an evolving and personal relationship with God. 

The Centering Prayer method is a prayer of intention not attention. We do not focus our attention on anything, rather we intend to let go of thoughts and feelings as they arise along the stream of consciousness so that we may rest in God who dwells within us. As long as we are consumed with and by our thoughts and feelings we are not able to sink into the depths of our own being where we are not other than God, we are one.

We can’t stop our thoughts and feelings. We don’t even try. They come and go like the weather. They are not good or bad, they just are. In Centering Prayer we simply let them float on by like the clouds in the sky. When we become attached to a thought or feeling we simply let go of it and slip back down into the depths of our own being to rest with God. 

In order to let go we make use of a Sacred word which is a one-syllable word that doesn’t pack a lot of meaning for us personally.  It is simply a placeholder for our intention to let go of thoughts and feelings as they arise. Whenever we grab hold of a thought or feeling we silently and gently say our Sacred word as the symbol of our consent to the presence of God within us and our letting go of whatever we’ve taken hold of.   

Father Keating teaches us that “human beings were made for boundless happiness and peace.” Centering Prayer disposes us for the realization of this deep and abiding happiness and peace by conditioning our letting go muscle. We let go of everything that is less than or other than God. Over time the prayer seems to re-situate our starting place. Where once we started from the hurried, worried thinking/feeling self, we now proceed into the moment from a deeper place, a place of union where we are not other than God, we are one. From that place we love whatever and whoever is right in front of us with God.

 It is helpful to keep five key terms and Keating’s definitions of them in mind as we study:

  • The prayer method illustrated in these 4 guidelines:

    1. Choose a sacred word or a sacred breath as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.

    2. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

    3. When engaged with your thoughts, return ever-so- gently to the sacred word. Thoughts include body sensations, feelings, images, and reflections.

    4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.

  • “the development of one’s relationship with Christ to the point of communing beyond words, thoughts, and feelings.” Contemplation is the gift of moving beyond sensory experience of God and waiting upon God to an ever-deepening intimacy with God that transcends sensory acquisition.

  • A synonym for Contemplation

  • “the self developed in our own likeness rather than in the likeness of God.”

  • “The image of God in which every human being is created; our participation in the divine life manifested in our uniqueness.”