Celebrating Life begins with three questions of each retreat. What needs to be healed? What needs to be forgiven? What needs to be celebrated? Those of you who have ever experienced Fr. Carl’s retreats know that he asks three questions, and then he offers these gifts.
Most of us spend a lot of time dealing with our healing and forgiving. We don’t spend time on what needs to be celebrated—especially celebrating how God has worked in our lives or how Fr. Keating’s presence has impacted our life journey. Because of that, there is an imbalance in our lives. Where is the JOY? Where are the HOPE and TRUST?
Our time together focused on one or two important events in our lives through the lenses of our daily routine, the human condition, spiritual practices, the surprise graces (God winks), and the magnification (manifestation) of it for others.
Serendipitously, Fr. Carl Arico joined us on the first anniversary of our Memorial Mass for Fr. Thomas Keating. How awesome it was to celebrate the life of Fr. Thomas Keating and his “Surrender to Love.” Let us take some time to celebrate our own life in a spirit of gratitude for all the Lord has done for us.
Fr. Arico is honored to have known Fr. Keating since 1969 and believes whole-heartedly in the purpose of Contemplative Outreach. As a testament to his faith in the power of contemplative prayer, Fr. Arico has practiced Centering Prayer since 1975 and taught the prayer since 1978. He also was present for the first intensive Centering Prayer retreat that Father Keating offered at the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, New Mexico in 1983, which many founding members of Contemplative Outreach attended. Fr. Arico has seen Contemplative Outreach develop from a wish to the organization it is today. “The growth that has taken place in Contemplative Outreach,” he observes, “is a miracle of God’s grace and the power of prayer.”
Fr. Arico is known for his humor and his ability to bridge the linguistic gap between the clergy and laity. He credits this ability to the positions he held following his ordination as a diocesan priest for the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ, in 1960. In 1987, he accepted the full-time responsibility of becoming a staff member of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. at the request of Fr. Thomas Keating.
Fr. Carl is a co-author of the book Living Our Priesthood Today (1987) with Fr. Basil Pennington, and the author of Taste of Silence, a guide to the fundamentals of Centering Prayer.
One of the founding members of Contemplative Outreach Ltd., Fr. Carl Arico in this special Spring mini-retreat talks about The Power of Silence, and it’s ability to bring our lives closer to the Ultimate Reality.
