“Sin is ugly; we can’t sugarcoat this.”

The Healing of the Lepers

Mike Gormley begins by discussing the social effects that were impressed on lepers in Jesus’s time. They were isolated physically, emotionally, and spiritually for their disease was deadly contagious. However, he references Luke 17:11-14, which describes the story of the leper whose faith in God ultimately healed him. Now that he had been healed, he could go about his normal life again. Included in his schedule would be returning to the Temple, and that is why Jesus instructed him to tell the priests of his healing first. When Jesus healed someone, they were able to return home and their home is the Temple. Mike states that “Jesus is not just concerned with the individual, he wants to bring that individual into the life of the Body.”

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In his talk on prayer, Fr. Martin shared some of his own struggles with prayer and gave tips on how we can improve our own prayer lives.

Before anything else, Fr. Martin made an important distinction. While many of us are tempted to make prayer about us seeking God, Fr. Martin explained that prayer is all about God seeking us. In order to respond to God seeking us, there are a few things that Fr. Martin suggests.

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500 million tweets daily on Twitter. 1.7 million pictures posted every minute on Instagram.  900,000 likes every minute on Facebook. 9000 snaps per second on Snapchat. We are swimming in social media. It is no surprise that statistics show that teenagers spend about 9 hours a day on social media. In his talk, Paul J. Kim challenged teenagers to use social media for good.

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“Are you kidding?  What’s Stupidville?”  After her initial confusion learning about Steubenville conferences, youth minister Carolyn Anch decided to take a group of about 12 teens with her.  Thirteen years later, that group of 12 has grown to 124 and the youth group has become a family.

Without youth ministers, Steubenville wouldn’t be possible.  They are the ones to continue the work when everyone goes home on Sunday and the ones who have been doing prep work for months leading up to the conference.  Carolyn is one of those rockstar youth ministers.

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In preparation for entering a new chapter of their lives, many graduated seniors tend to struggle with one common task: not only maintaining, but strengthening their faith. As they go off to college and their environment changes, they will discover and gain a great deal of independence, and it is up to them on how they utilize it.

Steve offered a few helpful tips to these seniors on how to keep their fire for God ignited and elevated throughout the next chapter of their lives.

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