This can be a weekly abstract of the earlier week’s Day by day Meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF), and a few by Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG). You possibly can click on on the title of a DM as a way to view the unique piece in its entirety. Additionally, please notice, we are going to proceed to supply a video educating by Matthew every Monday.
December 8, 2025: Extra on Science, Spirituality and Gratitude (MF)
Thom Hartmann, recognized for his prophetic work within the space of politics, provides us a glimpse of his non secular facet in an article known as “The Radical Energy of Gratitude to Rewire Your Mind and Life.” He says: I all the time suspected that this each day follow of gratitude helped hold me sane in these insane occasions, however now I’ve found there’s precise science behind the psychological well being impacts of it.* After we concentrate on appreciation, our mind “dials down the manufacturing of cortisol, our physique’s major stress hormone.” Additionally, Individuals who follow gratitude frequently report sleeping higher, in all probability as a result of they’re changing anxious ideas with appreciative ones earlier than bedtime. Gratitude is one thing all of the mystics understood and is a large a part of the Through Positiva. A gratitude follow might help us traverse these difficult occasions.
December 9, 2025: Ingratitude within the Faith Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Pushing (MF)
We’ve got been meditating lately on the billionaire oligarchs who’ve method an excessive amount of energy in our nation. It appears they’re decidedly missing in gratitude, whereas focusing overly on visions of apocalypse and destruction. In his 4 lectures on the Antichrist, Peter Thiel makes no point out of pleasure or gratitude. And Elon Musk appears to suppose he’d be happier on Mars. These males are decided to finish democracy and exchange it with a physique politic designed by and for the rich elite. About males comparable to this, Thomas Merton mentioned that they’re fearful males afraid of a very powerful voyage of discovery, that which separates us from ourselves. Every of them convey their unattended father wounds to the physique politic, and in so doing, danger an apocalypse and finish of the world for all.
December 10, 2025: Justice and Love (GG)
Italian poet Franco Arminio lately mentioned one thing quite simple but profound: “We should struggle for justice, in any other case we get sick.” Arminio insists that the decision to behave for justice is so deep that if one fails to reply it, one’s humanity is misplaced and, as a consequence, one’s organism provides up. Right here is the poem, translated by Gianluigi: For a while now there was no person round us/no person serving to with our struggle, as they consider solely in their very own/We get sick each time we surrender the struggle for our truths,/and any time we’re lenient with the lies of others/Love is defending these whom we love greater than asking why we love, or till when/Love is combating collectively, and nothing else.
December 11, 2025: Introduction and the Seed of Justice (GG)
Within the Western Catholic custom, this time of Introduction — roughly coinciding with the darkening month of December — is a time of imploration for justice. The truth that the Savior was born in Bethlehem doesn’t imply that justice has triumphed, and but it does imply that justice is feasible. We’d say that the seed of justice has been planted. Introduction liturgical texts are derived principally from the books of Isaiah and Psalms. Two verses particularly encapsulate the true spirit of Introduction: Oh heavens, weep down, and will the clouds rain the Simply One! and Might the earth open up, and the Savior sprout from it! The archetypal picture of the seed that’s planted within the deep earth in winter, solely to germinate within the spring, is worthy of meditation after we grow to be uncertain concerning the quantity of vitality we are able to put forth into the work for justice.
December 12, 2025: In the present day: The Feast Day of Our Woman of Guadalupe (MF)
Matthew lately had the privilege of attending a wealthy seminar on the Black Madonna taught by Christena Cleveland, PhD, writer of God Is a Black Lady. On Monday evening, Alessandra Belloni and Matthew carried out a workshop on the Black Madonna as nicely. (You possibly can hearken to it HERE.) Alessandra is writer of the highly effective and sensible e book, Therapeutic Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Nice Goddess. Throughout her presentation, Alessandra casually remarked that the Woman of Guadalupe is the Black Madonna. All Feast Days of the Black Madonna and Our Woman of Guadalupe are celebrations of the Divine Female, the Nice Mom, and the Mom of Africa, who’s the Mom of us all. Mary is a clever Mom in that lineage. The values of the Nice Mom embody caring for the least and most weak amongst us. That is one thing desperately wanted in these darkish occasions.
December 13, 2025: Ecological Justice (GG)
Final week Gianluigi was in Florence to ship a lecture on Matthew Fox and Creation Spirituality. His job was to shut a sequence of lectures on “Saving Planet Earth.” The thrust of GG’s presentation was the concept creation is the primary article of the Christian religion and that the overemphasis on redemption, divorced from creation, is the principle drawback. Sadly, the convention was full of older folks. GG was, in truth, the youngest individual current. When GG requested his very gracious host — who teaches theology on the native Catholic seminary — the place the seminarians have been, he shook his head and mentioned: “You didn’t actually count on them to be thinking about cutting-edge theology, did you?” Clearly, now we have our work lower out for us.
*Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report, “The Radical Energy of Gratitude to Rewire Your Mind and Life,” November 27, 2025.
Banner picture: “Our Woman of Guadalupe heals Juan Bernardino. Mosaic from the facade of the church of the Fifth Apparition constructed on the positioning of Juan Bernardino’s home.” Photograph by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. on Flickr. Artistic Commons.
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient for a New Technology
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth
The A.W.E. Venture: Reinventing Training, Reinventing the Human
