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February 1, 2024What is this event attracting in excess of 20,000 young Catholic students from across America?
SEEK.
So, what is SEEK? It’s a nationwide conference put on by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), which is impacting young adult Catholics nationally. SEEK is also changing and shaping college Newman centers and students around Oklahoma as well, as confirmed by a University of Oklahoma student, a University of Central Oklahoma missionary, and a priest from Southwestern Oklahoma State University, all who attended this year’s SEEK conference in St. Louis.
The student
“It was awesome!” Sara Lau, an OU campus minister said.
On Jan.1, students flocked to St. Louis to the America’s Center Convention Complex, also known as “The Dome.” Waves of students and missionaries arrived at The Dome collecting a Magnificat and a bag to handle such materials. The students and staff alike began to find their seats among the great gathering of the faithful as the opening Mass began. The procession of the Mass had more than 100 priests and rows filled with bishops, priests, nuns and seminarians.
Lau said it was like “God’s army walking in.”
The celebration of the Mass took place every day for the duration of the conference.
On a regular day at SEEK24 the students enjoyed Mass followed by a keynote speaker. This year FOCUS brought in Father Mike Schmitz and Monsignor James Shea, touching on different topics such as death, the Mass, growing deeper in the faith, and the broken human heart.
After the keynote the students would break into group sessions where they chose different “tracks.” There was a track for college men, one for women, and a missionary discipleship track among others.
Near the end of the five-day conference, Lau said a several-hour adoration “brought (the students) back to Jesus, the actual purpose of this conference.”
On the sendoff day they celebrated a closing Mass and students departed back to the normalcy of their daily routines.
The missionary
Elizabeth Anders, a FOCUS missionary at UCO, didn’t get to attend the conference fully.
Some may say that working the conference isn’t as exciting as going, but Anders said happily, “I got to meet a lot of different people from different backgrounds.”
She met people from all over the U.S. working the conference store. She asked them how they wound up at SEEK or about their faith journeys. But as her time working the store drew to a close each day, a new duty presented itself. Each missionary from UCO had a small group, one they met with to shared thoughts and feelings of the conference every day.
“We shared graces every time we met,” Anders said.
She went on to say that she truly grew in relationship with all of the girls in her group.
The priest
As a priest at SWOSU, Father Kelly Edwards noticed that one of the perks to attending was “Networking and being in that awesome environment with the energy of all of those people.”
The crowds were strong, but the gathering of the Church’s religious was a sight to behold, he said.
“Nowhere else in my life do I get to see hundreds of priests and religious in the same place,” said Fr. Edwards, who serves as the chaplain at SWOSU Catholic.
When asked to compare seek to another conference like Steubenville, Fr. Edwards said, “The engagement is way different.”
He explained that at Steubenville the high school students are sometimes not there voluntarily while at SEEK it is a purposeful “yes,” on the part of each college student who attends.
Father also praised FOCUS by saying, “SEEK really has a genuine (Catholic) mentality.”
He talked of the ties FOCUS has to the Catholic faith and said that they are a lay organization that is very authentically Catholic.
Anne-Marie Hagen is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.
