Saturday night Adoration – easily considered by many to be the “culminating” event of each Steubenville conference. The time when Christ speaks directly into our hearts; all of our wounds, our fears, our struggles, along with our joys, celebrations and hopes. God is good. He moves in big ways and does big things. But what if you don’t feel Him moving? What if you don’t feel Him doing big things? Is He still there? Do I still belong to Him?

Fr. Martin processed in with Jesus and knelt before Him on the altar. He led us in praying the Litany of Trust and one line stood out to me, “From the lie that I don’t belong, deliver me Jesus.” As I sat and adored our Lord, I found myself repeating this line over and over and offering up all of you as I did. “From the lie that I don’t belong…from the lie that I don’t belong… Lord, help your children know they are loved. Help them to know they belong!”

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Nic Frank spoke to us this afternoon about families and the impact that we can have on our own family. He began by making a comparison to Canada’s own All Dressed Ruffles. If you took out any of the flavors, these chips wouldn’t be the same. Something would be missing. The same can be said for our families. If we took away any of its members, they would be changed. Something would be missing.

Everyone’s family is different, but regardless of the family you come from, our hearts long for family. We were brought into this world through family and they are all around us. That being said, it is easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to the families we see on TV shows and social media. It can be easy to begin asking ourselves “Is this as good as it gets? Could it be better?” Additionally, some families have been taken down a path that no one intended. The path of divorce, addiction and other hurts can be devastating.

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Lisa Cotter shared her heart with us this evening as she told her testimony of finding where she belonged. She began by visiting her teen years and telling us of a “Jesus filled” Spring Break trip she took where she never quite felt like she belonged. Like many of us, she found herself asking “Where do I fit in? Do I belong here?” Upon coming home she found herself living in two separate worlds – her Friday night party world and her Sunday night youth group world. Two competing worlds which again left her asking “Where do I fit in?”

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In his session this afternoon, Jimmy speaks on truth. In his talk he gives us permission to wrestle with the truth, but urges us not to settle for less than it. Jimmy Mitchell: Truth Revealed Jimmy is from Nashville and is founder of Love Good, a company which supports and invests in artists and songwriters with the goal of evangelizing culture with beauty that is rooted in truth. The logo for this company is a heart with an arrow through it. Beauty pierces the heart and, once wounded, the heart cannot help but want to trace that wound back to it’s source. The wound often in our culture is truth. The source? God.

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Today’s Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Peter Wells and we are so blessed to have him with us this year. He serves as the Apostolic Nuncio to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland.

We all desire to feel loved, important, cared about. It is in our nature. We want to know we have people who see us for who we are. We desire to know our worth, but at what cost? In his homily this morning, Fr. Dave Pivonka challenged us to examine our true worth.

What is our worth?

Fr. Pivonka started his homily by defining worth as what one person is willing to pay for something, and what one person is willing to sell something for. As he addressed the youth he stated, “As a high school student your world is all about defining worth: you are a starter on the football team, you got an A on a test, you are in theater. You say that is what gives us value and worth, but brothers and sisters those are not the things that define us…you are worth more.”

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