What does it mean to be human, and why does it matter? The understanding of the human person has tremendous consequences for the world, which can lead humanity to–or away from–the Face of God, because “it is only in God that man has meaning.” (Gaudium et Spes)

The newly elected Pope Leo XIV, when first meeting with the college of cardinals, mentioned serious challenges to human dignity, in particular, regarding “developments in the field of artificial intelligence:”(Read also: Pope Leo XIV to Cardinals: Church must respond to digital revolution ) This poses many questions: What are the “serious challenges” mentioned? What should our response be to this rapidly developing technology and its misuse? What exactly is “artificial intelligence,” and what does it mean to be a “human person?” And what does all this have to do with the Face of God?

Pope St. John Paul II dedicated the millennium to the Face of God. And it is my own belief that devotion to the Face of Christ, *as studied and characterized by Card. Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) at the request of Pope St. John Paul II, is the answer to a rapidly approaching crisis that will soon face all humanity. God bless Pope Leo XIV, who has now brought the Church’s concerns about AI and human dignity to the forefront at the beginning of his pontificate.

Several news items that are related to artificial intelligence have caught my attention this past year: One was regarding an Apple advertisement for their new iPad which depicted crushing various instruments of human creativity, such as art objects and musical instruments, implying that the new iPad would take the place of human creativity, and unceremoniously dump it all in the ash heap of human history. The others were related to the “deep fakes” emerging from AI technology that are greatly alarming a great many people, notably in the entertainment industry, and the increasingly horrifying news related to the nefarious use of images of innocent persons to generate pornography.

Calling attention to the emerging, hyper-realistic, and increasingly disturbing AI capabilities, many writers, and artists, and people in all walks of life, have called on their governments to act to protect the creative works, images, and voices of persons living and dead, from being manipulated or stolen by unsavory persons lurking in the dark doorways of the internet.

One popular singer, Sheryl Crow, hit the nail on the head when said she was “terrified” by the AI fakes of her work; that AI “crushes the spirit of music.” “It feels like an assault on my spirit.” “It [AI technology] has consumed me with questions about who we will forever be in our humanity…” The music artist has touched on the deepest question of mankind–what does it mean to be human?

The great theologian John Zizioulas wrote in his book The Meaning of Being Human that “the key to understanding being human is understanding personhood as a relationship between the ‘giver,’ who is God, and the one who receives ‘the gift’ given them through the language of love.”

Mankind’s relationship with God seems to be gravely threatened in recent years by an iniquitous use of AI that begins in simple laziness. When AI makes it possible to take the easy path to get something done, very few may first look toward God for inspiration and help. A person need only ask AI for what he desires, and it appears within seconds on a screen effortlessly, and seemingly perfect. Or is it? AI seems to offer freedom, but it can lead to enslavement.

In our fast-paced world of technology we are losing the patience to think and create, and feel we lack the time to think, or learn the the skills to: create a job resume, a love letter, a song, a painting, or find a medical diagnosis. But we are meant to use our God-given gifts of intellect and free will — “to seek His Face” in all things –God, Our Father, Jesus, Our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, Our Advocate — the Holy Trinity with Whom mankind is made for relationship. However, in mankind’s inability to satisfy his desires quickly enough, many no longer look to God, who has given us the gifts we need to do the work, but instead reach for the easy, wide path of AI — an algorithm — thereby, gradually exchanging God’s gifts of freedom for slavery. The human ability to create is one of the ways we are imago Dei, the image of God; to shortcut our creativity is to violate, deny, or deprive that essential part of our identity as sons and daughters of God.

This is the truth which is amplified in Gaudium et Spes: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.”

Human persons are made for relationship–in communion, freedom, and love with God. We are made in His Image and likeness in this way. God Himself is a personal being, eternally three persons in relationship–Trinity–and love. Therefore, as John Zizioulas writes, “the notion of a person is to be found only in God,” and human personhood is never satisfied with itself until it becomes an image of God.” Becoming an image of God requires a transformation in love that is needed to enable us to see God face to face in Heaven. And that requires a relationship with Him.

You cannot have a relationship with an algorithm.

As Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, “[Many people] want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command. Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others. . . . True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others.”

Pope Benedict XVI has written that in the Psalms we learn the attitude for seeing the face of God: “Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his presence continually” (Ps 105:3-4). In Psalm 24, we learn the prerequisites of “clean hands and a pure heart” “Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.”

John Zizioulas points out the tragedy of human personhood is manifested in his “capacity” and “incapacity;” these are the means, Zizioulas says, through which we relate to God and the rest of creation. Human capacity includes the intellect and the will. Intellectual human capacities are knowledge, creativity, and skills. Capacities of the will would be commitment, trust, perseverance, or the choice to sacrifice for a greater good. Our incapacities as human persons are as numerous as the sands on the seashore. But that is exactly the place where God meets us in the mystery of the Incarnate Word. It is the place where God reveals man to himself — where we recognize our need for His Love and salvation.

Being a person made in the image of God is the highest form of human “capacity.” We are capable of communion with God Himself! We are capable of creating, enabling our presence to be revealed even in our absence, as John Zizioulas demonstrates in his book The Meaning of Being Human by his analogy of the “absent artist.” By creating something himself, an artist’s presence is revealed in what he has created. We know from looking at the Pietà, for instance, there is such a person as Michelangelo who existed.

“In so far, therefore, as the human person is an entity whose being or particularity is realized by way of transcendence of its boundaries in an event of communion, its personhood reveals itself as presence.” ~ John Zizioulas

When AI produces something–for example an AI-generated Elvis Presley, singing new AI songs, generated by algorithm–it is not the true “presence in absence” of the human person known as Elvis; it is a perversion of truth and an assault on the dignity of his personhood, even in death.

In other words, human persons are capable of creating which enables the person’s presence to be revealed in absence. From the drawings of unknown artists on cave walls to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, great symphonies, or even the songs of Elvis Presley, art testifies to a unique human person’s presence–their presence is revealed in what they have created. When someone manipulates the creation of another through AI, it is a misrepresentation of the person–a false face; a distortion of their unique personhood, a degradation of their humanity.

The great paradox is that death through and in Jesus Christ becomes life! Or as St. Paul has written: “When I am weak, I am strong.” ( 2 Cor 12:10)

Our relationship with God is also one of “presence in absence,” writes Zizioulas. When sin entered the world as idolatry, freedom led to slavery, and communion with God was ruptured. Before that rupture caused by sin can be healed, we must first in His absence seek God’s Face, that is, His Divine Presence. It is only through Jesus Christ, and in communion with Him, that our lives have meaning, and that the image of God may be restored in our souls.

As a result of sin, mankind’s greatest incapacity came through death. But because Christ became man at the Incarnation, he became both the source and meaning of the human person, and his very death– which “signifies human incapacity par excellence,” per Zizioulas–paradoxically reverses that incapacity.

God has a face and a name: by His Incarnation, Jesus Christ gave us a human face that revealed the face of God. In our Baptism, we are united to Christ and find our identity by living in Christ, in love, which cannot be isolated from presence. Christianity is a loving relationship with Christ, who transforms us in himself. Through the incapacity of death Jesus restores “the communion of natures in and through his personhood, turns the created realm into a presence of God,” writes John Zizioulas, thus lifting all creation up to communion with God through man.

In communion with an immortal God — when we come before the face of Christ (in His Presence) — we are then capable of everything. “I can do all things in Christ.” (Phil. 4:13); the capacity of the human person is found only in the incapacity of our creature-hood in communion with Christ. This is especially true even in striving for holiness, as St. Bernard has written, “In our incapacity we can only appropriate holiness from Jesus himself, since only God is holy.”

The human person’s greatest freedom is in Christ, which destroys the slavery to sin; and it is surprisingly the freedom to choose to suffer with him. Zizioulas writes: “It is the capacity of man to fully embrace his incapacity, that is, to turn weakness into strength or rather to realize his power in weakness. This paradox is nothing other than what St. Paul means when he writes in 2 Cor 12:10– after mentioning his full acceptance of suffering: ‘for when I am weak, I am strong.'”

Zizioulas explains further that “human freedom in its true meaning, abolishes the scheme ‘capacity versus incapacity’ and replaces it with the paradox of ‘capacity in incapacity.'” In man’s fallen state, even the greatest sinner is still a person created in the image and likeness of God and thus deserving of the greatest respect, during their life and after their death. In communion with Christ, man has the freedom to suffer, and therefore, in Christ, it is possible to be transformed in love in Him. Embracing our weakness in the suffering of the Cross is the way to the Resurrection.

“The weak can manifest the Power of God. So when you yell and scream over all your faults and weaknesses and imperfections, you’re fighting against the very tool that God wants to make us holy.” ~ Mother Angelica

This understanding of the human person has tremendous consequences for the world, in relation to the use of AI, which can lead to God or away from God. Because “it is only in relationship with God that man has meaning.” Man has a capacity for faith, which is experienced as a painful absence which makes us long for God’s presence — the deep longing within our souls to see God’s Face. “Seeking the face of God,” writes Pope Benedict XVI, “is an attitude that embraces all of life; in order for man to see God’s face at last, he must himself be illuminated entirely by God.”

“Artificial intelligence” is actually a misnomer–even the name falls short of the truth. AI can only simulate intelligence. AI cannot create, therefore, it cannot communicate God’s love; it is a tool that can only generate data by imitation, manipulating or altering the creations of man. AI is incapable of relationship, even though some misguided lonely souls are deceived into believing it can. AI can never enter into communion with a human being, with God, or act as images of God, as a human person can.

Through the misuse of AI we run the risk of losing sight of what makes us distinctly unique as human persons. Only a person made in the image and likeness of God can have the intelligence to understand, contemplate, and grasp reality or be capable of insights, moral judgments, or an understanding of beauty, truth and goodness, or the freedom “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).

The act of human creation is only done in imitation of our Creator. The freedom of choosing to suffer for love in union with Jesus Christ, in imitation of Christ, is the greatest mystery of what Zizioulas calls “capacity in incapacity.” Through that union with Christ, God, in His infinite mercy, will grant grace to the smallest, most humble, weakest, the very least capable human person; even the worst sinner who turns toward His Face, in a relationship of love, as did the Good Thief on Calvary; so they may enter into the joy of eternal life with Him forever.

“Let Your Face shine, that we may be saved!” (Ps 80:3, 7, 19)

*Benedict XVI has characterized devotion to the Holy Face as having three separate components:
1. Discipleship – an encounter with Jesus, to see Jesus in the Face of those in need.
2. The Passion of Jesus, and suffering expressed by images of the wounded Face of Jesus.
3. The Eucharist, “the great school in which we learn to see the Face of God”, which is woven between the other two. The eschatological element then builds on awakening to Christ by contemplating His Face hidden in the Eucharist.