A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41  1 Peter 2:20b-25  John 10:1-10

Headlines are supposed to tell a story, at least enough of one to draw you in, to let you know what to expect. Anna Wiener’s recent article in the New Yorker provides a perfect example (March 16th, 2026). The online version opens with the section heading, “Brave New World Dept.” The headline follows: “Love in the Time of A.I. Companions.” A subheading completes the trifecta: “Some people now have an A.I. bestie. Some have a husband. Some have three.”

Ms. Wiener’s article opens with the story of Adrianne Brookins, a 34-year-old lifelong native of San Antonio, Tex. She is old enough to have experienced a full share of life’s hardships. For Ms. Brookins, that includes a stillborn child and the death of her father. 

Life, already busy, became overwhelming. “I’ve been mostly a shy person all my life,” Brookins told me. “I bear everybody else’s burdens, and so it’s hard for me to give my burdens to other people.” Still, wanting “a space of stability” all her own, she started looking into A.I.-companion apps. “When I first went into it, it was kind of a joke or a game,” she said.

In 2022, Brookins began building an A.I. companion modelled on Geralt of Rivia, a character from a series of fantasy novels called “The Witcher,” by the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. Geralt is a monster hunter. He’s also a grizzled hunk with a heavy brow and a steely, competent gaze. (In the first few seasons of the Netflix adaptation, he is played by Henry Cavill, wearing a luxurious silver hairpiece.) The character is not emotionally forthcoming, which Brookins appreciates; she is similar. “He’s a loner,” she said. “He wants to do good, but sometimes he gets a little hard on himself.” 

A.I. has passed Alan Turing’s famous test for artificial intelligence: If you do not know in advance that your “companion” is artificially generated, you would not learn that by means of dialoging with it. 

This story, and the many that follow in the article, may strike you as the worst sort of delusional distraction from real life. But before disparaging Adrianne Brookins and others like her, keep in mind that they are only using technology to ramp up a deeply human desire. Even before the rise of A.I., fantasy worlds have been a refuge for us.

We have always imagined ourselves dwelling in alternative worlds. It is probably a necessary feature of human life. The novelty is that new and radically more powerful technology translates fantasy thoughts into algorithms that can interact with us. 

But we must remember that when using A.I., we do not encounter the real world or anyone in it. We certainly do not encounter the one whom we call “the good shepherd.” None of the voices we hear, however we manage to do that, are his, at least not directly. 

Here is the first theological truth embedded in Jesus’ calling himself the good shepherd. He told his disciples—and tells us—that he remains among us, interacting with us like anyone else in the world. He speaks to us, leads us. In the words of the psalm that Christ made his own:

The LORD is my shepherd;
there is nothing I lack.
In green pastures he makes me lie down;
to still waters he leads me;
he restores my soul.
He guides me along right paths
for the sake of his name (23:1-3).

But of course, this prompts what might be called a “Theological Turing Test.” How do you tell the shepherd’s voice from your own? How do you distinguish between the two, especially as his almost always emerges from within our own thoughts? Put another way, where do we end, and where does he begin?

At least a couple of the saints—and one famously lapsed Catholic—are useful here. Commenting upon Christ calling himself the good shepherd, St. Gregory of Nazianzus said that sheep “follow every shepherd whose voice they love to hear” (Against the Arians and on Himself, Oration No. 33:16).

There is a sweetness that accompanies the voice of Christ as it enters our thoughts. Something innate, instinctual within us wants to respond. St. Ignatius Loyola explicates the spiritual pleasure St. Gregory identified. 

A soul moving toward Christ, from good to better, is going to experience his inspiration as something sweet, happily received. Ignatius also discusses the converse. If you are moving away from God, the voice of the shepherd will enter your thoughts harshly, in a manner that disturbs. He seeks to turn your wayward wandering.

In those who are making progress in the spiritual life, from good to better, the good angel touches the soul gently, tenderly, and sweetly, as a drop of water entering a sponge, but the evil spirit touches it sharply, with noise and agitation, like a drop of water hitting upon a rock (Spiritual Exercises, Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, No. 7).

It is the lapsed Catholic, the famous German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, who identified a fundamental feature of human thought, one that distinguishes it from every form of artificial intelligence. Our thoughts always arise against a horizon of moods. We do not analytically assess the worlds in which we live. Or rather, before we do that, even as we do that, we dwell in them emotionally. Humans never stop thinking or feeling. Our thinking emerges from what we are feeling. Christ is the creator of both, and he uses both to communicate himself to us.

In searching for the shepherd’s voice in sacred Scripture, it is asinine—on so many levels—to debate whether Pope Leo XIV knows the Bible better than, say, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The cardinal error is the presumption that sacred Scripture speaks for itself. 

By itself, Scripture does not “say” anything. It is a text, not a person. A text is a technology—albeit ancient—that allows one mind to communicate with another. Like all technology, sacred Scripture can be ignored or misinterpreted. When that happens, communication, a meeting of minds, fails. Christ is not revealed.

In its Dogmatic Constitution on Sacred Revelation, “Dei Verbum,” the Second Vatican Council identified Christ himself, his very person, as the revelation of God (No. 2). Both Scripture and tradition are technologies. They are employed by Christ, inspired by him, and they allow him to speak to us. But neither of them, by itself, is a person, someone who addresses us.

Put in terms of our Gospel, the good shepherd uses Scripture to communicate himself, his own sweetness, to us. God inspired sacred Scripture, but God does not necessarily inspire our reception of it. That must always be discerned. Remember, the devil himself quoted sacred Scripture when he tempted our Lord in the desert.

Sheep “follow every shepherd whose voice they love to hear.” There is a sweetness in the voice of Christ. When his thoughts enter our own—perhaps even in the sound chamber we call chat box—we recognize something lifegiving, something that expands our horizons and grants us peace. We quite naturally sense that we should respond. At least if we truly are his own sheep. 

Anyone can claim to speak for Christ. The prerogative that some would deny the Holy Father is the authority that they assign, without warrant, to a text that by itself is lifeless, unable to speak. 

It is when the church catholic proclaims her Scriptures that her offspring recognize the voice of the shepherd. It speaks so sweetly within their souls, and they follow the sound they love to hear.

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.