MONK DID NOT RESPOND TO GRANDMOTHER'S DEATHBED REQUEST!

Thomas Keating, pioneer in centering prayer, interfaith dialogue, dies at 95

Oct 26, 2018

by Dan Morris-Young NCR

Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating: "He taught me the value of friendship with members of different religions. He taught me the value of silence and careful thinking." (NCR file photo)

Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating, a global figure in both interreligious dialogue and Christian contemplative prayer, has died at the age of 95.

Keating died Oct. 25 at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, where he had been abbot from 1961 to 1981, and where he began his role as one of the chief architects of what is now known as centering prayer.

Internationally acclaimed for his extensive writing, lecturing and teaching on the contemporary practice of meditative prayer and on interfaith discourse, Keating had been transferred to the Spencer monastery infirmary on March 26 from St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, for enhanced medical support, St. Benedict's officials told NCR.

According to St. Joseph's Abbey, the funeral will be held in Spencer, with a private burial in Snowmass.

An Oct. 26 statement from Contemplative Outreach, the international organization co-founded by Keating, said, "It is with deep sorrow that we share the news of the passing of our beloved teacher and spiritual father."

"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," the statement said. "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."

"Details will be forthcoming for a 24-hour, worldwide prayer vigil," the release added.

Keating, born March 7, 1923, was the third of four children born into an affluent New York City family, the son and grandson of prominent maritime attorneys. Presumably to follow a similar path, he launched his college education at Yale University in 1940.

His mother was a Bible reader and his father a lapsed Catholic. However, Keating found himself attracted to religion and told of sneaking out of his house to attend Mass.

In a 2014 documentary, "Thomas Keating: A Rising Tide of Silence," Keating recalled: "At 5, I had a serious illness. I heard adults in the next room wondering whether I'd live. I took this very seriously, and at my first Mass bargained with God: 'If you'll let me live to 21, I'll become a priest.' After that, I'd skip out early in the morning before school and go to Mass. I knew my parents wouldn't approve, so I never told them."

During his freshman year at Yale, Keating was increasingly drawn to church history and the writings of its mystics.

He transferred to Jesuit Fordham University in New York City, where he graduated from an accelerated curriculum in December 1943. While he was there, the spiritual director of a camp at which Keating had worked took him and others to visit Our Lady of the Valley, a Trappist monastery in Rhode Island, which was destroyed by fired in 1950.

"Keating was mesmerized," reports a 5280 magazine feature story on the monk.

A 20-year-old Keating entered the strict Trappist community at Valley Falls, Rhode Island, in January 1944. He was ordained a priest in 1949.

In the documentary, he describes the painful break from family and friends: "I broke communication with everyone I knew ... and prayed for my family daily. I felt the more austere the life, the sooner I would achieve the contemplative life I sought. I spent the next five to six years observing almost total silence. I couldn't leave. My only communication was with two abbots, neither of whom could give you any friendship or equality."

His grandmother, he said, wrote him from her sickbed: "I miss you so much. I'm lying here in bed, and I said to the nurse, 'If my grandson doesn't come home, won't you please just throw me out the window?' "

Unable to respond, Keating said he prayed harder for those he'd left behind.

Keating had resided at St. Benedict's at Snowmass for approaching four decades, not having left the campus for several years, St. Benedict's Abbot Joseph Boyle told NCR last July. Boyle died of cancer Oct. 21.

PAT SAYS:

A CRUEL CHURCH AND A CRUEL RELIGION

It is obvious to me that Father Thomas Keating was a holy and prayerful Catholic monk who leaves much good behind him as he goes to God.

I am grateful to our contributor Tom Wood for sending me the article.

However, that sentence above about his grandmother calling him to her deathbed and his refusal to go leaves me stunned!

It also reminds me of the story a Ursuline nun from their Waterford convent told me.

This nun was born and grew up literally 10 yards away from the convent gate.

Years, after she entered her mother, was on her deathbed from cancer and the Reverend Mother refused to allow the nun to walk the ten yards to visit her dying mother!

When the nun's mother died the Reverend Mother DID NOT ALLOW her to attend the funeral.

Instead, the nun was allowed to stand at an upstairs window to watch her mother's coffin going past in a hearse!

I think of this as an act of unspeakable cruelty that was common in the Catholic Church right up until the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s.

Father Keating did a wonderful thing spreading the habit of Centering Prayer.

But what of his distraught and dying grandmother?

These attitudes came from a legalist interpretation of Jesus saying things like his followers had to leave everything and go after him and not look back.

Jesus also talked about "hating" father mother and family.

But Jesus himself was the example par excellence of caring for the sick and the dying.

How can any monk or nun, or anyone, think that one can have an authentic prayer life and at the same time no go, or prevent someone from going to a deathbed at the request of the dying?

I am reminded of that message I once read on a poster:

GOD WANTS SPIRITUAL FRUITS,

NOT RELIGIOUS NUTS.