Finding Grace at the Center

It can be a purley intellectual exercise in the Aristotelian or Platonic sense where the soul focuses on certain values like goodness or being in an effort to reach the highest understanding of these values.

Trappist Monk Thomas Keating is the founder of the Snowmass Interreligious Conference and a member of the peace council. Keating was appointed superior of St. Benedict's Monastery in 1958 and was made Abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in 1961. He is the former chairman of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Keating has written Awakenings, a collection of homilies and Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer, a collection of his most significant writing.

After his ordination in 1957, M. Basil Pennington spent several years studying in Rome and received and S.T.L. and a J.C.L. He assisted at the Second Vatican Council as a peritus and in the preparation of the new Code of Canon Law. He started Cistercian Publications in 1968 and founded the Institute of Cistercian Studies at Western Michigan University in 1973. He became known through his efforts to help the Church refind its contemplative dimension through the Centering Prayer movement.