Contemplative Prayer is the opening of mind and heart - our whole being - to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words and emotions, whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, thinking, feeling and choosing; even closer than consciousness itself.

The root of prayer is interior silence. Though we may think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words, this is only one expression. Contemplative Prayer is a prayer of silence, an experience of God's presence as the ground in which our being is rooted, the Source from whom our life emerges at every moment.

For the Church's first sixteen centuries Contemplative Prayer was the goal of Christian spirituality. After the Reformation, this living tradition was virtually lost. Today, with cross-cultural dialogue and historical research, the recovery of the Christian Contemplative Tradition has begun. The method of Centering Prayer, in the tradition of Lectio Divina (praying the scriptures) is contributing to this renewal.

Centering Prayer is meant to enrich and complement other forms of prayer, not to exclude or replace them. Centering Prayer is at the same time a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. It is Trinitarian in its source, Christ-centred in its focus, and ecclesial in its effects; that is, it builds communities of faith and bonds the members together in charity.

Centering Prayer is drawn from ancient prayer practices of the Christian Contemplative Heritage, notably the Fathers and Mothers of the Desert, the monastic practice of Lectio Divina (praying the scriptures), the Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and St. Theresa of Avila. It was distilled into a simple method of prayer in the 1970's by three Trappist monks, Fr. William Meninger, Fr. Basil Pennington and Abbot Thomas Keating at St. Joseph 's Abbey in Spencer , Massachusetts.