Homily
Fr Frank Brennan SJ
7 June 2026
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58
Listen at soundcloud.com
Today we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi – the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Each one of us remembers our first communion. On that day, everyone of us displayed reverence and some sense of mystery. Back then we wondered, and to this day we still wonder, what Paul meant when he asked the Corinthians: ‘The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?’ Whatever the mystery, each of us declares, ‘Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Say but the word and I shall be healed.’ Pope Francis used delight in reminding us that the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak’[1]. It is food for the journey as we make our faltering way to the Father. We all need the medicine; we all need the nourishment.
Pope Leo will be sure to find great inspiration in the follow up observation by Paul to the Corinthians in today’s second reading: ‘Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.’ Afterall Leo’s motto is In Illo Uno Unum (In the One, we are one) which he adopted when he first became a bishop, referring to St Augustine’s observation on Psalm 127 that ‘although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.’
In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Leo reflects on the fact that artificial intelligence is likely to have some profoundly good effects and some profoundly bad effects, and on all of us. In the near future, AI might help us cure diseases which previously seemed incurable; AI might help us build cheaper and better houses; and AI might help us to retrieve information so much more efficiently and to learn so much more than we thought we could. On the other hand, AI might contribute to large scale job losses; AI might make war even more deadly and protracted. Leo warns that ‘the growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more “feasible” and less subject to human control’. [2]Whatever the good and bad effects of AI, it should cause humanity to be more united in solidarity in our human identity. Leo insists that ‘we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings’[3] ‘who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity’.[4]
In his encyclical, Leo suggests that what we need in the age of AI is ‘a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love’.[5] He says: ‘In the Eucharist we find a visible manifestation of the reality that we “are the Church of Christ, his members, his body. We are brothers and sisters in him. And in Christ, though many and diverse, we are one: In Illo uno unum.”’[6]
He goes on to say: ‘The Eucharist opens us to justice and sharing, with a preferential concern for those who are burdened by poverty or marginalization. And while new economic and technological networks can generate exclusion, isolation and dependencies, the Church — nourished by the Eucharist — is called to make visible a different paradigm, one that preserves human connections, gives a voice to the invisible and ensures that processes are aimed at respecting people’s dignity.’[7]
This Sunday as we approach the table of the Lord, each of us has good grounds to fear that AI might generate exclusion, isolation and dependence. But we come to the table in hope that together nourished by the Eucharist we can go forth giving voice to the invisible and ensuring that processes are aimed at respecting rather than degrading people’s dignity.
There’s been a lot of discussion about Leo’s encyclical, and not just in church circles. I was particularly taken by a letter to the New York Times by a Jewish writer who used to work for IBM. He wrote:[8]
[I]n a future shaped by advanced artificial intelligence, religion may not diminish but instead acquire renewed relevance. Religion may gain new footing, not as a retreat from science, but as a response to it.
The more fully human cognition is modeled, the more attention may turn to what cannot be captured in those models: my subjective experience, moral awareness, spiritual longing, private thoughts, feelings and awareness that cannot be fully explained by biology or any other means.
Far from being displaced by technological progress, religious thought could be reasserted as a framework for interpreting what machines cannot verify or reproduce. Faith, ritual and metaphysical belief may function less as inherited tradition and more as a conscious affirmation of human distinctiveness in an increasingly synthetic world.
Paradoxically, the advance of artificial intelligence may intensify rather than dissolve questions of meaning, purpose and transcendence, leaving religion positioned not at the margins of modernity, but directly at its centre.
As we receive food for the journey today, let’s pray that questions of meaning, purpose and transcendence may intensify and let’s call to mind that first innocent fervour we displayed at our own first communion. In the Sequence at today’s mass, we pray:
Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.
You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.
Soon we will respond to the priest’s declaration: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.’ We are indeed blessed to be so called.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO, Adjunct Professor of Thomas More Law School at ACU and Adjunct Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, is a former Rector of Newman College, University of Melbourne, and CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). His latest books include Pope Francis: the Disruptive Pilgrims Guide (ATF Theology, 2025), and Gerard Brennan’s Articles and Speeches: Maintaining the Law’s Skeleton of Principle (2 volumes) (Connor Court, 2025).
[1] Evangelii Gaudium, #47 and Amoris Laetitia Footnote 351.
[2] Magnifica Humanitas #197
[3] Ibid #99
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid #234
[6] Ibid #235
[7] Ibid #235
[8] Steve Wenick, Voorhees, New Jersey, New York Times 28 May 2026.
