On the horizon of this city stands the Gateway Arch, which often catches the sunlight in its different colours and hues. In a similar way, in a thousand different ways, you must reflect the light of Christ through your lives of prayer and joyful service of others.
- St. Pope John Paul II on his Papal Visit to St. Louis, 26 January 1999
At the beginning of January I had the joy of participating in the SEEK23 Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. With 19 000 participants, 550 Priests, and every Catholic YouTuber and Podcast host you’ve ever heard walking around the Convention Centre, chances are you might have heard about it on social media. But if you have a couple of minutes, I’d love to give you a sneak peek into SEEK, and one which goes beyond a cheesy Instagram reel at that.
SEEK is the annual conference held by the apostolate FOCUS, Fellowship of Catholic University Students. FOCUS has teams of missionaries on university campuses across the US and in a handful of locations across Europe, including in Vienna, Passau, Dublin, and Belfast. As their mission statement reads, the missionaries strive to “invite college students into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church, inspiring and equipping them for a lifetime of Christ-centred evangelisation, discipleship, and friendship in which they lead others to do the same”.
I first came across FOCUS during my Year Abroad in Vienna, where I met the vibrant Catholic Chaplaincy, the KHG Wien, and the FOCUS missionaries who serve alongside it. I took part in a weekly Bible Study; reading, studying, and praying with passages from the Old and New Testament as we followed the ‘Story of Salvation’, and also in their Discipleship programme, where I found myself part of a community of students committed to helping each other to both grow in their faith and intentionally invite others into it.
When I returned to the UK for my final year of university, I got to know the FOCUS missionaries based at the University of Southampton (until last summer). We held a hybrid version of SEEK22 with students from Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy at Cambridge, joining those from Southampton to stream the talks from the US Conference and come together for a weekend of fellowship, the Sacraments, and prayer.
After two years of Zoom and hybrid conferences, it was therefore slightly surreal to be at the ‘real deal’. All the components which I was familiar with and had expected were there – Mass, Adoration, the hard-hitting talk from Fr Mike Schmitz, and many dear friends I hadn’t seen in months – but in a way that I couldn’t possibly have visualised or expected. For indeed the stillness of thousands of university students kneeling in cramped stadium pews in reverence of Our Lord, present in the Eucharist, or the sound of the same crowd belting out a ‘Salve Regina’ at the end of Mass, is hard to anticipate. There was also a wealth of input from speakers which engaged, formed, and at times challenged us throughout the work. In the mornings there were various tracks – for men, women, students in leadership, and the ‘Making Missionary Disciples’ track for those no longer studying – and in the afternoons there were ‘Impact Sessions’, where speakers addressed a range of topics such as Catholic Social Teaching, tradition, and life as a Catholic student today.
A personal highlight was Fr Josh Johnson, host of the popular podcast ‘Ask Fr Josh’, speaking on ‘How to Avoid Burnout’. Fr Josh reminded us to not strive after the ‘visible fruit’ of our efforts, but to remain rooted in our relationship with God, through which all our efforts towards others will stem. He drew attention to the Beatitudes, particularly ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ and ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ (Matthew 1:5-12), noting that when we cultivate this poverty of spirit and purity of heart, we will avoid developing destructive habits and chasing after motivations which will inevitably lead us to burnout. Jason Evert’s final keynote likewise called us to deepen our interior lives, stressing that ‘the heavy lifting is done in prayer’. Many speakers drew on the great theological wisdom and insight of the late Pope Benedict XVI, and it was moving to be able to come together and pray for him throughout the conference, which coincided with his funeral.
There were also many smaller moments throughout SEEK23 which encapsulated the joy and vitality of the Church; the array of religious sisters and brothers from every order you’d heard of (and from every order you hadn’t), the fruitful conversations in the hallways with friends old and new, the crowd passing the artist Ben Rector a cowboy hat with an Our Lady of Guadalupe sticker on it during his performance. Not to mention a Priest crowd-surfing during said performance…
Yet for all the fun ‘extras’ (a pair of saint-patterned socks, anyone?), SEEK23 was very much centred around Christ and the celebration of the Eucharist each day. At the start of the year, it was a bold call for us to renew our efforts to make Christ the centre of all that we do. It left myself and the other thousands of participants returning to our homes across the world with the desire to share that love of Christ and encounter with Him which we experienced at SEEK23 with our friends and communities back at home. For as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
Final Procession out of the Closing Mass, 6 January 2023