Drawn Into the Life of God
This week I had the extraordinary privilege of being in Rome for the official launch of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” To stand in the Synod Hall as the Holy Father presented the keynote teaching of his young papacy was a moment I will not soon forget. I am still catching my breath from it, and I want to share with you why it matters so much, especially on this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.
Pope Leo names artificial intelligence as a new industrial revolution, much as Leo XIII a century ago confronted the upheavals of the factory age in Rerum Novarum. The Pope is neither afraid of this new technology nor naive about it. He reminds us that technology is never neutral, because it always carries the intentions and incentives of those who build it. His central plea is simple and bracing. We must keep the human person, and human flourishing, at the very center of every conversation about AI. He even calls on the world to “disarm” AI, to free it from the grip of military, economic and purely personal interests, so that it serves the dignity of every person, the dignity of work, the cause of peace, and the care of our common home.
What struck me most deeply was that the Pope did not stand alone at the podium. Beside him was Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the world’s foremost AI companies. After months of meeting with Chris and his team, I now count him as a friend, and I was moved to hear him admit with real humility that engineers alone cannot decide the ethical boundaries of this technology. They are shaped by ambition, competition and financial pressure, and they need honest critics and moral wisdom from outside their own walls. That is precisely the conversation the Church is called to enter, and it is work I have been quietly engaged in for years now, well in the background of parish life.
And here is where this coming Sunday speaks directly to all of it. On Trinity Sunday we celebrate the most beautiful truth of our faith. God is not a solitary force or a distant power. God is a communion of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one God, eternally giving and receiving love. At the very heart of reality is relationship. We are made in the image of this God, which means we are made for relationships too.
Our readings open this truth gently. In Exodus, the Lord passes before Moses and proclaims his own name as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” This is who God is at the core. In the Gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, not to condemn the world but to save it. Love that gives itself away, love that draws us in. And Saint Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians with the words we hear at every Mass: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
The Trinity is not a riddle to be solved. It is a life to be entered. We are invited into right relationship in three directions at once. Right relationship with God, who calls us by name and never tires of us. Right relationship with one another, made in the same divine image and therefore owed reverence, patience and forgiveness. And right relationship with the earth, the common home entrusted to our care. When any one of these relationships breaks down, the others suffer with it.
This is the lens through which the Church now looks at artificial intelligence, and through which I invite you to look as well. AI is not a person, and yet it is not a mere tool either, because it quietly changes us even as we use it. Like every powerful thing, it can serve love or serve harm. It can isolate us behind our screens, or it can free our time for the people in front of us. The deciding question is the one the Pope keeps asking. Does this serve the human person and human flourishing? Does it deepen our relationship with God, with one another and with the earth, or does it erode it? Used wisely and humbly, these new tools can actually help us get this right. Used carelessly, they will pull us apart.
So the launch in Rome and the feast we keep this Sunday turn out to be the same lesson. The God we worship is relationship. We are made for relationship. And every choice we make, including the choices our generation faces about technology, is finally a choice about whether we will live in the communion of love for which we were created.
As I came back from my hike yesterday, I enjoyed seeing the students and families after school that were dressed up for California History Day. There is something delightful about children so visibly engaged in learning and in the story of this state we call home!
I invite you to please join me tonight at 6:00 pm (after Saturday 5:00 pm Mass) in Spooncer Hall to learn more about our new Education and Spirituality Center. The center will be a newly constructed building (approx. 12,000 sq ft) located where the convent currently stands, and it is the heart of what we are raising funds for through our Bold Vision for the Future capital campaign. We have raised $12 million toward a $14 million goal, and we need all families and parishioners to participate now to make this a reality. Please come and learn more and enjoy drinks and appetizers with me and members of the Bold Vision team.
On Sunday morning, please join us for Donut Sunday and come and wish Fr. Dat well as he prepares to begin his new assignment at Holy Family Parish in July. He will be with us until mid to late June. Fr. Dat has been a wonderful presence among us, and we are grateful for all he has given to this community. And a special note: on Monday, June 1, Fr. Dat celebrates 13 years of ordination! Please keep him in your prayers. You can sign his online farewell card here.
On Wednesday, June 3rd at 7pm, Kalena, our Youth Minister, is hosting a Zoom information meeting about the Diocesan Middle School Youth Retreat. Details are in the bulletin.
Please keep our school administration and faculty in your prayers next week as they host a new family kickoff, welcoming new families to our school and community. Please also pray for our 8th graders at our parish school. Next week is their last week, they will celebrate Mass together on Friday and graduation on Saturday. We are so proud of them and we will send them forth with our blessing.
My brothers and sisters, I leave you with this message, the power of the Trinity has yet to be fully unleashed in us. Let us ask the Father to keep us close, the Son to teach us how to give ourselves away, and the Holy Spirit to bind us together in friendship and peace. Let us carry that same love into every room we enter this week, even the new and uncertain rooms of our age.
God bless,
Fr. Brendan