Centering Prayer

There is a room inside you where the door opens only to love. Centering prayer is the practice of entering that room and consenting, in silence, to the presence of God. You are not trying to say anything. You are simply there, and God is there.

OriginsThe Root of the Practice

Trappist monks Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger shaped the modern method at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts in the 1970s. They drew on the desert fathers, on John Cassian, and on the fourteenth-century English text The Cloud of Unknowing, which teaches that God is reached by love, not by thought. Jesus gave the root of it: go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.

The WayWhat the Practice Teaches

You choose a sacred word as a sign of your consent to God’s presence and action within. It might be Jesus, Abba, peace, or love. When thoughts arise, and they will, you return gently to the word. You are not emptying the mind. You are offering it, again and again, to the One who is closer to you than breathing. The silence is not empty. It is full of presence.

BeginHow to Practice

1. Choose your sacred word and hold it for the whole sitting.
2. Sit with eyes closed and settle briefly.
3. Silently introduce the word as a gentle sign of consent to God’s presence.
4. When a thought, feeling, or sound captures you, return to the word with tenderness.
5. Continue for twenty minutes, once or twice a day.
6. At the end, stay silent for a minute or two, then pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly.

HarvestThe Fruit

A quiet joy takes root. Anxiety loosens. Prayer ceases to be an errand and becomes a friendship, deepening day by day into a peace that passes understanding.