This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF) and some are written by his colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto. (GG) You can click on any title to view the DM in its entirety. Also, remember that each Monday DM continues to include a video teaching by Matthew Fox. Thank you for your loyal readership.
May 4, 2026: Beyond SCOTUS: Conscience vs. Fascism (MF)
After the un-Supreme Court decimated the Voting Rights Act last week, the governor of Louisiana rushed to stop an election already in progress in order to redraw congressional lines and gerrymander more seats for white voters. Mahatma Gandhi understood moments like this when he said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.” In contrast, fascism is a kind of idolatry, a worship of power. Fascism and conscience are incompatible. When religious institutions support fascist movements, whether Opus Dei or “Christian nationalism,” that is not only institutional violence, but hypocrisy.
May 5, 2026: Cinco de Mayo, May Day, & Explosion of Economic Inequality (MF)
Cinco de Mayo (May 5) originally celebrated a surprising military victory in the Battle of Puebla, Mexico. The next year, Mexican Americans in California commemorated the date as a holiday and a “political and cultural moment tied to resistance and democracy.” Meanwhile, May 1st is International Workers Day. One of the reasons workers are suffering right now is the huge disparity between the wages of workers and the CEOs. One recent article in The Guardian is titled: “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay.”* In the year 2025, billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends. This means that every two hours, the average billionaire receives more in dividends than the average worker earns in an entire year.
May 6, 2026: Sex and the Church (GG)
Last week, Pope Leo, answering a journalist’s question about the blessing of same-sex partnerships that the German Catholic bishops are planning to authorize, said: “We (Rome) disagree, but the unity of the Church does not depend on sexual matters.” This, by a Church held together, since at least the XVII century, by rules about heterosexual marriages, priestly celibacy, and nuns’ virginity. Matthew Fox has been, of course, one of the most vocal opponents of the ban on homosexuality within the Catholic Church. For generations, homosexuality was viewed as a deviation from “what is natural.” But this was based on faulty science. We must applaud the Roman Catholic German bishops for their courage.
May 7, 2026: Flesh and the Church (GG)
Many church officials love power. Sex is code for power because human hierarchical relationships have a hidden sexual structure. Consider the sadomasochistic structure of all kinds of domination and submission dyads within the human species, as well as the blind obedience requested by the Church. Even today, as GG learns in his role as a spiritual counselor, the repression of sexual desire is a powerful tool of power and domination within the Catholic Church. But sex is also code for sensuality. The words “flesh” and “carnal” come to mind. Matthew Fox says that flesh can become a redemptive force…. When we know it, we become grateful and reverent toward our bodies, toward food, toward flowers, toward forests, toward soil, toward other animals and birds and fishes and toward other human beings. Gratitude and Reverence heal. They redeem…. Flesh redeems because it awakens awe and wonder and delights. Awe is redemptive.
May 8, 2026: The Universe and Flesh (GG)
When Matthew Fox talks about sexuality, or even just the human body, he places such themes within a cosmological context. He helps us connect the dots between the truth of the fleshliness of the earth and of its relation to the fleshliness of the universe and our own flesh. Richard Hooker, an Anglican theologian of the 16th century, responded to the Puritans’ allegiance to all the “laws” of the Bible. He asks, “What is a law?” He then argues that God has set many such “laws” in the universe as well as in the human heart, apart from anything written in any book — even the most holy of books. Matthew says about sex: None of us would be here without lust. Our parents’ lust is what brought us into this world. Lust in itself, therefore, is holy and sacred. Subversions of lust, like pedophilia, exploitation, and trafficking of the vulnerable by the powerful, should not be understood as “sins of the flesh” but rather as “sins against the flesh” inasmuch as they are offensive to the flesh.
May 9, 2026: Mother’s Day 2026 including Gaia & Colbert Birthing the Art of Laughter
A blessed Mother’s Day to all! Bringing new life into the world is an incredible act of creativity. And nourishing and caring for life is something that mothers–and all of us–are called to do. We are all mothers in some way. As Meister Eckhart insisted, we are all mothers of God and “God is always needing to be born.” Mothering brings balance and caring, compassion and justice into all aspects of our lives. With creativity comes Joy, self-expression, and sharing. One person who has blessed us with these qualities is Stephen Colbert. For many years, he has entertained us with his humor and presence. Laughter is one of the art forms that gets us through hard times. Humor is a threat to fascism which wants to shut it down as part of its addiction to control. We will miss Stephen as his show ends later this month.
*Michael Sainato, “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay,” The Guardian, May 1, 2026.
Banner image: The blessing of connection. Photo by Lareised Leneseur on Unsplash
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
