The following notice was posted on the website of our treasured e-course partners, Contemplative Outreach, addressed to their worldwide community.
"It is with deep sorrow that we share the news of the passing of our beloved teacher and spiritual father, Thomas Keating. Fr. Thomas offered his final letting go of the body on October 25, 2018 at 10:07 pm at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. He modeled for us the incredible riches and humility borne of a divine relationship that is not only possible but is already the fact in every human being. Such was his teaching, such was his life. He now shines his light from the heights and the depths of the heart of the Trinity."
The monastic community from St. Benedict’s Monastery and the Contemplative Outreach community held a memorial service in Fr. Thomas in Denver, Colorado. Highlights of the service are found here.
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Father Thomas Keating was one of the foremost teachers of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition. He was born in New York in 1923 and converted to Catholicism while a student at Yale University in the 1940s. He entered a cloistered Roman Catholic monastery of the Cistercian order. Keating was the former abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, and has also resided at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.
Father Keating, along with M. Basil Pennington, co-founded the Centering Prayer movement and Contemplative Outreach, a worldwide nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the practice of this Christian form of meditation. He presented the Centering Prayer method and its related mystical theology to gatherings of non-Christians, Protestants, and Roman Catholics worldwide. He took his ministry to seminarians, priests, lay people, and prisoners. Father Keating also frequently convened and participated in dialogues with contemplatives of other religions.
Contemplative Outreach has partnered with Spirituality & Practice to create many e-courses inspired by and presenting the work of Thomas Keating. You can explore them and other resources using the magenta links at right.
Read For:
- Authoritative explanations of contemplative prayer
- Insights into the spiritual practices of attention, silence, and listening
- Lengthy treatments of ways to combat the false self and open to the divine therapy of grace
- Guidelines for Christian life, growth, and transformation
