I bring you this homily today from Florence, Italy. I am here with a group of Jesuits from throughout the whole world, those working in formation, bringing them all together to learn a little bit more about artificial intelligence and how to integrate that into their ministry.

One of the great gifts that we have as priests is that we are invited to journey with people in some of the most tender and vulnerable moments of their life. In particular, when people get sick, and when they get terminally sick,
they invite us into that very vulnerable part of their life, and they share the most powerful insights and the most tender moments ever shared.

Our conversation led to talking not so much about artificial intelligence, as what this means for humanity. What does it mean for humans to flourish? What does that conversation look like? It really was a mirroring of the document that Pope Leo announced.

What does it mean for us as human beings to flourish? What does it mean to have dignity as a human person? And what is the common good for all people? The Pope goes through a whole hundred and thirty-five years of the Church’s social teaching to refocus our energies on that message.

This past week, as I said at the beginning of Mass, has been quite a week for me. It was extraordinary. I had the opportunity to sit in the Synod Hall as the Holy Father gave his new encyclical, Magnificat Humanitas, to the world. I am still unpacking the magnitude of the event in my life, but there are some things that really stood out for me.

In our Catholic church, we typically yhink of the Holy Spirit in rather tame terms.  We think of the Holy Spirit as a nice peaceful dove coming, fluttering into our lives, or tongues of fire settling down on our head. But in Celtic spirituality, it is very different. In Celtic spirituality, it is a wild goose, honking and wild, untamed, fierce and furious, but free.