This Homily was shared by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, at the opening Mass during the 2026 DELTA Summit on AI, Faith, and Human Flourishing.
Homily Transcript
I am delighted to be with you as you gather to reflect on the significance of one of the most
powerful creations of human ingenuity: artificial intelligence. Admittedly, this innovative
technology holds great promise in so many fields.
At the same time, there are fears about how this new technology, among other things, will flatten
our humanity by reducing our lives to cold engagement metrics, algorithmic preferences,
behavioral and deterministic probabilities. As Pope Leo writes in Magnifica Humanitas, treating
human life through a purely “technocratic paradigm” risks reducing individuals to data points or
economic tools, erasing the unique spiritual, relational, and physical nature of the person. And
then of course there are the fears about our very existence. And so quite understandably we find
ourselves asking, as you do in these days, what does it mean to be human?
Today’s Gospel, narrating the Call of Matthew, forces us, however, to take a step back before
considering this question in an abstract way as it pertains to AI. This story presents us with an
irrefutable truth. Many of the dehumanizing tendencies of AI, especially those that reduce
humanity to cold engagement metrics, algorithmic preferences, behavioral and deterministic
probabilities, have had space in the human heart for a long, long time.
The scene begins with Jesus walking past the customs’ post, and in a singular way he focuses on
Matthew, the tax collector. Who is he? According to both society and religious leaders, Matthew
is a transactional instrument to extract revenue efficiently. In the eyes of the Roman authorities,
he was a functionary operating an economic apparatus; in the eyes of his fellow Jews, he was a
traitor reduced to his defective moral ledger. His future is determined both economically and
spiritually. Being a tax collector is not merely an occupation but an irredeemable moral tag. Most
tragically, in his own soul, Matthew had likely accepted this reduction. He lived in a world where
a person’s worth was calculated strictly by input, output, debt, and solvency. He is, in every
sense, the ancestral prototype of the modern digital citizen.
But where the culture has reduced Matthew to a tool or a sinner to be categorized, Jesus saw a
person made in the image of God. The gaze of Jesus does not accuse but awakens in him a grace
stirring deep within him, prompting him to get up immediately. This is where Matthew begins to
regain and rediscover his humanity. The grace awakened in Matthew’s heart proved far more
valuable than the coins left on the table. With a new-found freedom he steps away from his post,
breaking from the determined identity others have imposed on him and goes in a new direction.
His conversion leads to a calling to follow Jesus, which moves him to host a dinner in his home,
not just for Jesus, but for other outcasts like himself so that they too may flourish and be fed by
Jesus at his table.
With Matthew’s conversion and calling, Jesus dismantles the dominant culture of looking on
people through rigid and transactional lenses, which reduces them to profiles and categories. He
speaks to us of the grandeur of God’s mercy. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call
the righteous but sinners.” The system of sacrifice, the purely transactional and distant
relationship with God and neighbor is replaced by the healing touch and closeness of God’s great
mercy, a favor that is never exhausted.
The Word of God today invites us to make Matthew’s story of conversion and calling our own by
first acknowledging the uncomfortable truth that artificial intelligence is not inventing out of thin
air a cold, deterministic lens of human life that reduces humanity to algorithms. Long before
machine learning began predicting our next click, human hearts were already categorizing
neighbors, indexing reputations, and “canceling” people based on past data—reducing the sacred, infinite complexity of a person made in the image of God to a static, immutable profile. The truth is that AI is not demonstrating alien behavior when it leans into many of the tendencies we fear. It is acting as a high-speed amplifier of longstanding human tendencies. In a word AI is holding up a mirror to us, revealing our own tendencies that view, treat, and judge one another in cold and deterministic ways. So, before we ask the abstract question, what does it mean to be human, each of us must ask “what must I do to be and become more human?”
The answer to that question is found in the path of conversion and calling taken by Matthew.
Conversion begins not with anything he does, for Jesus takes the initiative. Matthew was not
looking for a savior at his customs post; Christ looked at him first, which awakened in him a
grace deep within him. It is a grace that seeks out the sinner before the sinner even thinks to seek God. The point is simply this. Our humanity is defined not by our self-initiated efforts but by our capacity to receive the grandeur of God’s relentless desire to love us first. Trusting the grace
deep within us means relaxing into the truth that our fundamental identity is already given, it is
loved and not forfeited by our weaknesses. If we want to know what it means to be human, we
must trust that this grace lies deep within us and each other. This is the basis of our respect for
one another and our commitment to promoting human dignity. This is the conversion required of
those who desire to be and become more human.
Matthew then is free, free to leave the security of his post, free from listening to the voice of his
guilt, and free from the attempts to fix himself first. And most importantly he is free to discover
that his life is a calling, “follow me,” which moves him to gather other outcasts to sit at table to
be fed by Jesus so that they too may flourish. Discovering our lives as a calling is how we
become more human, for it transforms how we look at the people around us—especially those
who seem furthest from goodness, truth, or faith. When we trust that Jesus is already seeking
others, we stop writing people off in a deterministic way based on their current state, public
labels, or past mistakes. Instead, we honor, name, and awaken their mystery, that grace is already quietly pursuing them.
Recognizing that AI reflects our own institutional habits is an honest first step for it presents us
with a critical choice: we can allow its deterministic logic to reinforce our human tendencies to
replace the mystery of personhood with predictability data, thus becoming the template for how
we see ourselves and our neighbors, or we can let the coldness of the mirror shock us into
remembering what makes us human. The challenge, then, is not merely a technical question of
algorithm design, but an anthropological one. Detecting where technology flattens human
identity into static metrics, can become a fresh opportunity to appreciate more fully where our
own social, economic, and relational practices do the same—and to consciously choose a
framework that honors the agency, mystery, and dignity of every person. That framework takes
shape for each of us by tapping into the grace deep with in the human soul that allows us to
discover God’s initiative, God’s relentless desire to seek and love us. It involves discovering our
lives as a calling, transforming how we look on and treat one another, not demanding sacrifice
but with the mercy God has shown us in cleansing our souls soiled by our failings, a mercy
whose favors are never exhausted.
The poet Hopkins captures well this Gospel vision of God’s grace at work in our lives and in our
world:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.