Fr. Mike Schmitz began his homily with a few jokes, of course. My favorite was that when he was younger, he felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body…and then he was born!

He then shared about a certain line from today’s Gospel that makes him laugh: when Jesus is talking to his disciples and says, “You are worth more than many sparrows.” He shared how this line can be quite comical when taken literally; but that it has a much deeper meaning. Fr. Mike explained that Jesus was simply telling his disciples that they belong. He said, “One of the key things that helps us know who we are is when we know we belong – and if you belong to God, it means you matter, that your life matters.”

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Cooper began his talk with a cool story about how his five year old had an experience of Jesus at a youth conference, where he even said, “Dad, I think Jesus was inside of me.”

He then broke down the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

Cooper went on to tell us how in a few hours we will be heading home, and some may say that “you guys will be heading back into the real world”, but he exclaimed that he thinks that Steubenville is the real world. After this conference, we need to go back home and share what happened here with those that weren’t able to make it to this conference, because if we don’t share anything that happened here we’ve blown it.

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Echoing throughout Oscar’s talk was the line “we all suffer differently.” He shared first about the suffering of his wife giving birth and his daughter having a headache. Then, Oscar reminded us that we never suffer alone. He described times when he sacrificed for his children and explained that his own sacrifices are nothing compared to the sacrifice that the Father makes for each of us. When God sacrificed His son for His children, He made the ultimate sacrifice. As Oscar says “God revealed Himself through the beauty of that cross.”

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Chris Mueller began his talk with graduated seniors by asking the rhetorical question: “What comes next?”

He then let us know that it’s ok to not know what you are doing with your life. He illustrated this by mentioning an experience from his own life where he, at one point, did not know what he wanted to do. He tried out acting, teaching in a public school, teaching theology in a Catholic school, and then to making shows for Catholic families to watch. Chris then mentioned that we should not wait for the world to give us permission to be classified as an adult. He defined being an adult as: “Adulting is making mistakes and learning from them and then moving on.”

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