Jimmy Mitchell kicked off Steubenville 2018 with the first talk, The Father’s Love Revealed. He encouraged everyone to embrace what it means to be a child of God through vulnerability and our weaknesses.

Mitchell discussed the feeling of being small and broken. He experienced these feelings visiting the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. After a day of adventuring, he was covered in mud and scratches and felt small approaching this holy grotto. But, once he began to enter the healing water at Lourdes, those feelings of being small, dirty, and broken were “overshadowed by the vulnerability.” In the grotto in prayer he said he was, “feeling little, feeling vulnerable in many ways feeling all of my brokenness but specifically feeling it in light of God’s merciful infinite love.” We are imperfect, small, and vulnerable, but God continues to love us unconditionally and recklessly.

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In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus speak of the wheat and the weeds growing together in the fields (Matthew 13:24-30). Bishop Edward Rice’s homily focused on how this image is very similar to what we are heading into as we prepare to leave the Steubenville Conference to return to our homes, parishes, and schools. Though we live in a culture thick with weeds, we must stand strong and engage the culture, sharing the Gospel message.

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Paul began his talk with a story about his first honest prayer to God. It happened at a Steubenville Conference when the host invited the teens to pray. At first he didn’t want to. He was used to being the jokester, not the serious guy. But when he saw his friends around him praying, he eventually offered up his own awkward prayer. He joked about how different girls are from guys when it comes to crying. Like most guys, he did not want to cry. But the tears flowed that day, after saying his first honest prayer to God.

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Maria is proud to be a cradle Catholic from St. Simon Parish in St. Louis where she attends youth group, and goes to Mass every Sunday with her family.

But, after being made fun of for being Catholic, she put her faith into a box, becoming somebody she had never intended to be.

Then, on a Saturday night during Adoration at Steubenville, she realized she needed to face up to God and what she had done – and once again take pride in her Catholic identity.

Quotable

“I am not going to hide my light under a bushel basket to appease other people’s opinions.”

“We are amazed, we stand in awe, for we have been changed by the power of the Cross.”

These lyrics are what constantly go through my head the second I hear anyone reference “Saturday Night Adoration.” Even years in the future, I have no doubt that I will still be able to vividly imagine myself singing the lyrics to “How Great Is Your Love!” by Passion at the top of my lungs along with 3,859 of my closest friends in the Q.

I will never cease to get chills every time Adam Bitter would pause from singing in the middle of songs such as Lord, I Need You, Great I Am, Closer, and Overwhelmed so we could hear everyone’s voices echoing in the arena with such passion and joy.

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