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Listen to the Homily
Sacrificial Love
Bishop Scott Bullock
Ordination to the Priesthood of Deacon Todd VanderMay
Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Rapid City
June 19, 2026
At the University of Central Florida’s College Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication Media graduation on May 8, 2026, businesswoman Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at the private investment firm Tavistock Group, told the students that artificial intelligence represents the next industrial revolution. Her remarks were met with immediate boos and jeers from the graduating students, some shouting something like, “AI stinks!”
Caulfield was apparently visibly shocked by this reaction, paused and asked, “Ohh what happened? Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?”
What chord did she strike? Well, that phrase what chord did she strike and the usage of producing an emotional response goes back to the 1800s, rooted in the sense of a musical harmony that produces an effect in our emotions. Striking a chord. In this case, while we might have expected young tech savvy graduates to cheer the advances of artificial intelligence, just the opposite happened. There was something unsettling about how technology is revolutionizing our lives, especially in the case of a graduate — revolutionizing human labor. Most commentators have suggested that the boos related to the prospectus that these future employees would be replaced by AI or their competencies would quickly be made obsolete, but I think it’s more to it than that. So does our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV, as he expressed in his recent encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas, on the safeguarding of the human person in time of artificial intelligence. The implication and the likely explanation of the reaction of those graduates in Florida is that AI is a threat not just to employees but something deeper to the very nature of the grandeur of the human person. And let there be no doubt the Catholic priesthood is all about the grandeur, the dignity of the human person created in God’s image.
Pope Leo begins his exploration of the dignity of the human person which needs safeguarding in this AI age when he says, and I quote, “The Church’s Social Doctrine brings us to the very heart of our faith: the mystery of the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who as a communion of persons – Father, Son the Holy Spirit — is love itself in relationship, expressed in the mutual gift of self and in sharing with the world. As the (second Vatican) Council recalled, human persons are called to communion with God and can ‘fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving.’ Indeed the deepest vocation of the human person is to enter into the Trinitarian dynamic of love received and shared.”
Our dignity reaches its fullness when we are in communion with God, and the priest is all about, in fact, dedicated to that fact — to communion with humanity and God. Above all, in the certainty of the Eucharistic Communion. Father Todd will be all about providing Holy Communion — our union with the Trinitarian life and love at the very heart of why we’ve been created and how we live our life to its fullest. Without this communion we’re left with lesser communions of our own making which can’t possibly satisfy the God sized holes in our souls. So, establishing what we need for our souls, nothing artificial, but that which is real, in its very essence communion with God. The Holy Father then continues by reminding us that Jesus Christ entered the world to provide this all satisfying communion. He continues, “Those who believe in him are engaged in the great work of renewal that began with the mystery of his passion, death, and resurrection, and they cooperate in building up the kingdom of God, learning to embrace all men and women as brothers and sisters, children of one Father. In this way, both the proclamation of the Gospel and Christian life, guided by the action of the Holy Spirit, tend to bring about social consequences in the world.”
Father Todd and his brother priests are all about the proclamation of the Gospel that will transform the world with the truth of God and his desire for communion with each of us. When we might instinctively boo at some artificial feeding of our souls with solely human efforts that cannot feed us, the priest proclaims the truth that satisfies us and sets us free from false things, false gods, those things which offer communion but only leave us wanting. Then the holy father concludes his teaching about the human person in that encyclical when he speaks about all of us.
“Created for relationship, every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others and with creation. Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love.”
Here the pope speaks of God’s mercy where our lives do not depend on our choices, especially our failures, but upon the gift of God’s unfailing love. Nowhere is this truth more evident than in its two supreme acts that Father Todd will offer to the faithful: the Sacrament of Penance, where our confession of our failures will be met by God’s healing love. And the Eucharist, always ready to meet us poor sinners with his lavish communion of life and love.
Artificial intelligence, whatever benefits it might provide, in the end promises a utopian fulfillment that will miss the mark. The priest of Jesus Christ, including this soon to be new priest of Jesus Christ, has another promise: sure, certain, and real. The human person is created in God’s image and made for the perfectly satisfying communion with God for which each has been created. A communion that awaits the other side of God’s mercy through his gift of his true presence of the Eucharist and the other sacraments.
In the Gospel we heard this evening, Jesus commissioned St. Peter, the other apostles, and all those who have been given a share in this commission through the successors of the apostles, by simply saying that if they love Jesus they’re to feed his sheep.Not with something artificial, but something supremely real — the Lord himself. What you are about soon, Father Todd, is a matter of life and death. Death without the Lord. Life and communion with him. I invite you to take up this call with the boldness of the Holy Spirit. When you become aware of your weakness before this mission, recall that any weakness, as the Letter of the Hebrews reminded us this evening, leads you to the humility to deal patiently with the ignorant and the airing with the same mercy that you already know.
Rather than booing something artificial today, we cheer something very real. A real priest with real humanity who seeks to bear the true and real presence of Christ through his humanity just as God willed it since you were born.
Finally, to preserve your sacred ministry of offering to the faithful what they know, almost by instinct that they need, communion with God let’s remember what’s evident in this Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, that the authentic priestly ministry is always, always at its heart Marion in nature. Since God desired and chose Mary as his chosen means and preferred way, that Father Todd will most fruitfully bear Christ to the world the very heart of his mission. So, in this truth let us, at this critical moment, rely upon the words of the prayer of Saint Charles Borommeo:
O holy mother of God,
pray for the priests your Son has chosen to serve the Church,
help them by your intercession to be holy, zealous and chaste,
make them models of virtue in the service of God’s people,
help them to be prayerful in meditations,
effective in preaching,
and enthusiastic in the daily offering of the holy sacrifice of the Mass,
and help them to administer the sacraments with joy.
Amen
