Live and Self-Guided Online Courses
Liturgical Courses for Advent and Lent
Lumen Divina: An Online, Self-Guided Advent Retreat
This Advent e-retreat is a contemplative engagement with Scripture, art and music, as well as the teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating and other mystical writers to explore the great themes of the season that inform and enrich the contemplative life:
Wisdom
Light
Unity
Beauty
Incarnation
This e-course emphasizes devotion and practice to enter the liminal depths of the season. Practices include Lectio Divina — quiet, receptive reflection using Scripture — as well as Visio Divina with art images and Musica Divina with various musical selections. These practices awaken all of senses and being, inviting inner stillness and fostering deep listening for how the Spirit is speaking and moving in our personal experience and journey.
The retreat content unfolds as follows:
– one email will introduce a theme and include liturgical reflections and a video teaching from Fr. Thomas Keating on some aspect of “Mary the Mother of God” as the model of consent from an ecumenical, contemplative perspective.
– the next email will expand the theme presented in the former email with further liturgical reflections, contemplative voices and a segment of music for practicing Musica Divina.
– the next email offers a Mary/Mother-themed image for practicing Visio Divina. This cycle continues through the whole e-retreat.
Register for this e-course here.
Partial scholarship from Contemplative Outreach available here.
The Grace of Lent: Foundations for Contemplative Living
This online retreat, originally created for Lent in 2014, aims to create a Lenten atmosphere of silence, stillness, and a quiet inner joy of alert receptivity. You are encouraged to partake of the particular beauty of the season viewing Lent itself as an artful preparation to a slow and sustained intentional journey where the heart is awakened into a new life in and through divine love. Here we are purified not only by what we give up and surrender, but also by how we are inspired and experience illumination.
For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
Lux Divina: An Advent Journey
This e-course affirms and celebrates the Divine Light of Advent and Christmas — with us and within us always. This e-retreat is reflective and enlivening, drawing on the teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating, art, music and other contemplative voices. For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
The Gift of Life
you will redeem me, Lord, God of truth.
I will rejoice and be glad in your mercy.
You will not abandon me.
I trust in you, O Lord;
you are my God.
My destiny is in your hands.
Let your face shine on your servant;
save me in your unfailing love.
— Psalm 31: 6, 8, 15-17
This course will explore the gift of life in all its phases, even those of diminishment and death, as phrases of evolution and transformation in and through Christ. It is based on the recent DVD series with Fr. Thomas Keating, The Gift of Life: Death & Dying, Life & Living. Fr. Keating is an internationally renowned theologian and an accomplished author who has traveled the world to speak with laypeople and communities about contemplative Christian practices and the psychology of the spiritual journey. He is a founding member and the spiritual guide of Contemplative Outreach.
Topics for this Lenten e-course will include:
Stages of Dying
Death
Suffering
Judgment and Mercy
Surrender
Coming Home
Fr. Thomas’ nine meditations on the meaning of the Cross for Holy Week
The course will consist of a combination of email, video, and audio teachings, as well as the opportunity to share and connect with others in the online Practice Circle. You can expect:
– Email teachings will be sent on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
– Teachings will be excerpted from the Gift of Life DVD series.
– A contemplative engagement with Scripture and the liturgical themes of Lent as a way of seeing, listening, reflecting, and then living the great themes of Lent in your own life.
– A special invitation to participate in the United in Prayer Day on March 19, either through local groups and events and/or a 24-hour, worldwide virtual prayer vigil.
Susan Rush and Mary Anne Best will be guiding “The Gift of Life.” Susan has been serving in health care all of her adult life. Her background in Clinical Pastoral Education, Formation for Contemplative Leadership, and Spiritual Direction certification has assisted her in her many years of serving on hospice and palliative care teams. Mary Anne was one of the original editors and producers of The Gift of Life DVD series. A long-time Centering Prayer practitioner and a frequent Centering Prayer retreat leader, Mary Anne has led 10 Gift of Life Centering Prayer retreats.
To register for this e-course as part of our year-long program “The Path of Life,” click here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
Silence and the Spiritual Journey
- Hosea 2: 16
The purpose of our historical lifetime is to provide us with space for the upward journey of evolution into vertical time and our assimilation of the eternal values that Christ brought into the world. This journey consists of everything from great touches of God (consolations) to the Dark Nights. It is a journey of purification into illumination and understanding, and further into contemplation and union. Becoming familiar with — and reminded of — the map or signposts of the journey is very useful and reassuring to keep making the various consents along the way.
This journey, originally designed for the season of Lent, will explore these traditional signposts of the spiritual journey, including the Dark Nights, with new teachings by Fr. Thomas Keating. It consists of a combination of email, video and audio teachings.
You can expect:
• Teachings delivered via 20 emails.
• Video teachings excerpted from the Spiritual Journey DVD series, previously unpublished interviews of Fr. Thomas, and new audio teachings with Fr. Thomas recorded especially for this retreat.
– A contemplative engagement with scripture and the liturgical themes of Lent as a way of seeing, listening, reflecting, and then living the great themes of Lent in your own life.
For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
Silence Night, Holy Night: A Retreat for Advent
receive encouragement to open to God’s coming in any way that He may
choose. This is the disposition that opens us completely to the light."
- Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ
Encouraging a disposition of silence and stillness during this sacred and yet busy time of the year, this e-course for Advent will focus on the practices of Centering Prayer and variations of Lectio Divina — quiet, receptive reflection using scripture, art (Visio Divina), and music (Musica Divina). The teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating and other mystical writers will also explore the great themes of this season as they inform and enrich the contemplative life. These themes include silence & stillness; beauty & splendor; inner preparation & expectation; Light; becoming; and Incarnation.
The retreat content will be shared via email, video and audio recordings, images, as well as links to musical selections. The Spirit will come alive as you incorporate these messages into your life through practice and reflection in your journal
Mary Anne Best, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler, and Pamela Begeman will facilitate this retreat.
For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
Advent of the Heart
“Advent of the Heart” is an Online Retreat and Practice Circle that explores the Path of Heartfulness in silence, word, and community in the context of the liturgical season of Advent, a time when we await the birth of the resplendent light of Christ in our inmost being, filling our hearts with joy and hope. This program will consist of the following elements:
• 12 emails with readings from scripture and the writings of Thomas Keating and other contemplatives
• video excerpts of Fr. Thomas Keating from the Heartfulness DVD series.
• audio clips from a one-hour teleconference with Fr. Thomas
This retreat has been developed by Contemplative Outreach, a community of individuals and Centering Prayer groups committed to living the contemplative dimension of the Gospel in everyday life. The retreat leaders are Mary Anne Best, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler, and Pamela Begeman, who have worked with Fr. Thomas Keating as he has shaped this material. Together, they will guide us toward an understanding of the contemplative dimension of the Gospel and its extraordinary implications and applications for personal freedom and global peace. Fr. Keating explains that the inherent human quest for happiness is itself the greatest proof of God’s existence:
“. . . we are called by God, to open to a new reality that is our true Self . . . the image and likeness of God. The path to this true Self and all its fruits and gifts is the challenge of becoming fully human. And to become fully human is to become fully divine. This is the fullness of life itself, a life abiding in the grace and truth of Christ, while at the same time, fully being the unique person you are.”
What a focus for Advent — the season when Christians and other sympatico souls await the coming of the Light! Enhance your experience of this season with this e-course.
For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
The Grace of Advent
to ourselves and in doing so, to move from ourselves toward him."
— Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart, Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings
It might be said that the spiritual journey is a series of consents, an accumulation of our Yes to God in big and small ways, day after day after day. Our practices, which start out as structures to encourage and assist our softening to Yes, over time become a way of life, a way of being in constant relationship with our Beloved. Then, like Fr. Alfred Delp, we might exclaim that “all of life is Advent,” a time of quickened awakening to new possibilities and new experiences of quiet, joy-filled and expectant living.
This e-course for Advent uses Scripture and new teachings by Fr. Thomas Keating and other mystical writers to explore the great themes of this season as they inform and enrich the contemplative life. The retreat content is shared via emails; it was originally designed to be sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, beginning on the Friday before the First Sunday in Advent. Included are links to new audio recordings of Fr. Thomas.
For more information and to register with our partner, Spirituality & Practice, please go here.
Partial scholarships are available through Contemplative Outreach. Please go here to fill out an online form.
