Steubenville Youth Conference by Autumn

Hello there!

In this blogpost I want to share with you some of my favorite parts of Steubenville (a giant Catholic youth conference) that Carson and I attended this summer. There are actually many Steubenville retreats all around the country. The one we went to was called Steubenville Mid-America. When I say that it was a large retreat, I mean it. At our retreat there were 5,000 attendees with a waiting list of over 1,300. This was just week one! Week two was just as filled. 

Before this conference, I had never been to Steubenville. My older siblings had gone when they were in high school, but for Carson and I it was a first. Some of our friends at St. Joseph the Worker (the church we do Totus Tuus at) asked us to go with them. I'm so grateful that they extended the invitation! Anyway, I think the best way to touch on this retreat is to give a list of some of the highlights.

The retreat started on Friday night with a lot of praise and worship to pump people up. After everyone sang some songs, we got to hear Fr. Mike Schmitz talk. If you have never heard of Fr. Mike, I highly recommend that you stop reading this post and look him up now. He's an amazing speaker and is excellent at explaining things, whether in a podcast or on youtube. He also has a daily Bible in a Year podcast, which my family enjoys listening to. Anyway, I could write a whole blogpost on him alone. But since I don't have the time to do that right now, here is a link to Ascension Presents (one of his platforms) 

https://www.youtube.com/@AscensionPresents/videos

His talk was super engaging and relevant. He talked about lots of things, but especially the theme of the retreat Refuge, based off of Matthew 11:28. After his talk we also had a few minutes of Adoration which was great. Then we had small groups, and Carson and I drove back home.

We were up and back at the conference early the next morning. Like the session before, we did praise and worship to pump everyone up. After that we had Mass, which was amazing. Like I said, there were over 5,000 people in this arena. To have that many people celebrating the Eucharist in one place was so powerful. Fr. Mike celebrated along with a bunch of other priests and seminarians.

These are a couple pictures from Mass

After Mass we had our woman's session, led by Sister Josephine. Sister was super energetic and an amazing speaker. She gave us a talk about the word enough. She did a really good job telling us all that we are NOT enough. None of us are enough without God. Because we are created in the image of God, we are called to greatness. She reminded us of our eternal room for growth. When she was done talking we were able to take a moment to turn to the ladies around us and pray over each other.

Our ladies' group as we prayed over each other

We had an afternoon session later on after the men had listened to their talk. We also had a chance to go to Confession (which had a line that wrapped all the way around one of the floors in the MSU student union!) The last main event that we experienced, though, was Adoration that evening. As I mentioned before, we had already had Adoration the evening before. However, this was the big session. Saturday night Adoration was even more powerful than on Friday because of all the talks we had had during the day. I feel like the entire conference was building up to Saturday night, and everything else was just there to prepare us for it. 

Our group was also extremely blessed to have floor seats in the arena, making us super close to Jesus when he was on the altar. After some time of quiet prayer, the worship leaders started playing again and Fr. Mike started the Eucharistic Procession. He took the monstrance and processed all around the stadium from the floor up to the nosebleed seats. There was a spotlight on the Eucharist and everyone knelt in Adoration while the music played. I can't even begin to describe what it was like to be a part of that. It truly was the single most epic and powerful thing that I have ever experienced in my life so far.

Our view as Jesus came in

The procession took well over an hour, but the time didn't seem to matter at all. Everyone's focus followed the monstrance as Jesus went around the arena. People fell to their knees, reaching out to Jesus overwhelmed by the fact that God was so close. I know that not everyone who reads this blog will understand what I'm trying to get across, but that's okay. Nothing Jesus ever did was ordinary. So, if worshiping this way seems different to what you may be used to, be assured that it is. But that doesn't make it any less overwhelmingly beautiful.

I think the climax of the retreat came for me when Fr. Mike came right up to where my friend and I were sitting. In that moment I knew that it was Jesus coming right to me, which was so humbling because the whole weekend we had been talking about us coming to Jesus and Him giving us rest. Who were we that Jesus came directly to us?

After Adoration we had another small group discussion and then Carson and I headed home to crash before leaving for camp the next day. Again, the two days I was at Steubenville were two of the most powerful days of my life so far. If you ever have the chance to go as an attendee or a chaperone I urge you to take it.