The last of the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching is Care for God’s Creation. Genesis tells us that God created the earth in all its beauty, and lastly, he created man to rule over the earth. Therefore, we are ...
Fr. Thomas Keating continues discussing the gift of “letting go” in Centering Prayer: [In Centering Prayer, we] entrust ourselves and all our loved ones to God’s infinite mercy, with a firm confidence that perhaps ...
“He [God] rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing” (Gen.2:2). Part of God’s work was creating humanity in his own image. Catholic Social Teaching promotes the idea that work is a sacred act; work is dignified because it is a form of continuing participation in God’s work, his creation. Rights of workers (productive work, fair wages, safety, organization, private property, etc.) must be...
Fr. Thomas Keating reflects on how Centering Prayer fulfills Jesus’s direction to go to your “inner room” to pray: Following the formula that Jesus offers us in Matthew 6:6, the Centering Prayer practice is ...
The Catholic Social Teaching Principle of Solidarity is based on the common belief that every person was created by God, and all are brothers and sisters in one human family, the Body of Christ. Solidarity has a common root with the words “solo” and “solitary”, meaning “one”. St. Paul reminds us: “When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. When one part....
In its Daily Meditations, the Center for Action and Contemplation recently ran the following reader feedback from a man named “Stephan H.,” in which he shares his contemplative practice of “Marvelling,” which we offer to you here: I have been a Trappist monk for 40 years. I have experimented with many different exercises of prayer and...
Jesus’ mission was to bring the good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, give sight to the blind, and to set the downtrodden free. (Luke 4:18-19) According to Matthew 25:31-46, our mission, ...
One of the key dispositions for Centering Prayer, and indeed for all contemplative practices, is a release of all expectations. On one level, dispensing of expectations in prayer serves a very functional, practical purpose: the fact is that “mistakes” will happen as part of our prayer practice – we may become distracted, fall asleep, or miss a designated time of prayer entirely, for example. Any expectation of....