HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD - NEW YEAR

HOMILY FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD – NEW YEAR

THEME: LIMITS OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

BY: Fr Andrew Ekpenyong, at St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, Omaha, USA.

1. Joke. Let’s start with an AI-generated joke. “A 5-year-old girl was asked by her teacher what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, ‘I want to be a princess.’ The teacher said, ‘That’s nice, but you know you have to work hard and study hard to be a princess, right?’ The girl said, ‘No, I don’t. I just have to marry Harry.’” This joke was generated using Bing Chat, similar to ChatGPT. Jokes aside, Pope Francis, in his message for today, 57th World Day of Peace, titled, “Artificial Intelligence and Peace”, writes: “Human intelligence is an expression of the dignity with which we have been endowed by the Creator, who made us in his own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26) and enabled us to respond consciously and freely to his love.”

Pope Francis adds that science and technology are brilliant products of human intelligence. Echoing the Vatical II document on the Church in the Modern World, he states positively: “When human beings, ‘with the aid of technology’, endeavor to make ‘the earth a dwelling worthy of the whole human family’, they carry out God’s plan and cooperate with his will to perfect creation and bring about peace among peoples.” Looking at artificial intelligence in the plural, as “forms of intelligence” which are merely “fragmentary”, in the sense that they can only imitate certain functions of human intelligence, he stresses the moral dimension: “The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as ‘intelligent’ as it may be, remains a machine.” Sisters and brothers, my sins and your sins, are concrete proofs of the limits of human intelligence, our abuse of the gift of freedom, leading to God’s intervention, a fresh start by God, sometimes called redemption or salvation.

2. Salvation. In starting afresh, God did not discard His earlier creation or creatures but rather made new covenants with people whom He will use for the salvation of all. In today’s 1st (Nm 6:22-27) Moses, Aaron and other human mediators are taught how to invoke God’s blessings, on the Israelites. The 2nd reading (Gal 4:4-7), proclaims the perfect mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, true God and true man, true God with all divine attributes of being eternal and all-powerful, as well as true man, like us in all things except sin. All this is revealed in Scripture. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman”. Gal 4:4. “Born of a woman” who was specially prepared by God for the purpose, as Angel Gabriel announced: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28). Mary, full of grace, and with the Holy Spirit coming upon her, became the ever-virgin mother of the God-man Jesus Christ. What a sublime miracle of redemption! At last, God’s own creature, Mary, used her God-given intelligence and freedom, to say “Yes” to God, without reservation. And although our Lord Jesus has two perfect natures, divine and human, He remains one person, which is why Mary, the new Eve, the new mother of the living, is also mother of God, Theotokos! Today, we celebrate her special role and title as mother of God, thanks to God’s fresh start, a new Genesis that fulfills the first and goes beyond.

3. Reception of Salvation. Sisters and brothers, if we allow God’s fresh start to inspire our own fresh start this new year, 2024, then the characters in today’s Gospel reading (Lk 2:16-21) become our models. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The shepherds. People in Bethlehem. In the midst of their occupation of by Roman soldiers, in spite of their loss of independence to the Roman empire and the ensuing political instability and economic uncertainties, the shepherds and the people glorified and praised God over the Birth of the Messiah. Sisters and brothers, we should still praise and glorify God like the shepherds because the Messiah is the one who gives us ultimate victory over sin, the cause of war. Fresh repentance, will bring that ultimate victory for us individually and collectively. Human intelligence recognizes its own limits, its moral failures, and the need for repentance. In fact, Pope Francis holds that recognizing and accepting our limits as creatures is the condition for overcoming what he calls “technological dictatorship”, the obsessive attempt to overcome every limit through technology, including AI. As we undertake fresh repentance, as we turn afresh to Jesus Christ our Savior, through new year resolutions, let us like Mary, also ponder in our hearts God’s own fresh start in which Mary cooperated. One line from Dante Alighieri’s prayer to the Virgin, in his Divine Comedy, captures some of the essence of today’s Solemnity: “O Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son”. Wow, so inspiring. Time for us to become better brothers and sisters of her Son, for He said: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it” (Lk 8:21).

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