Welcome to live.stlyouth.org, the live blog site which chronicles the Steubenville St. Louis Mid-American youth conferences from 2009-2014, as well as other events sponsored by the Office of Youth Ministry in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Feel free to browse this site, be inspired, reminisce, and post your favorite #tbt moments from this site to your favorite social media outlets!
We want to let you know that our coverage of SteubySTL has moved to a new site - Steubystl365 - where we have already posted some awesome stuff. Why? Find out by clicking here.
Please pray for us, and for all the teens and adults who have attended - and will attend - our conferences. We pray for you all of the time, and will continue to do so.
Another Steubenville Conference has come to an end, the best way we know how: with Mass. Bishop Rice spoke at length in today’s homily about what it means to leave an event like this and get back to normal life – or, as he called it, “the new normal.” Because after an encounter with Christ like this, what was normal before can’t be normal anymore.
Near the end of Mass, Bishop Rice invited Fr. Martin, vocations director of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, to come forward and call up any young men and women who have felt God’s call to discern the priesthood and religious life. Fr. Martin spoke a few words to the young men, and Sr. Consolata to the young women. They both encouraged these teens to listen to Christ’s voice over any other. Hundreds of teens came forward to be blessed by the bishop and prayed for by 3500 of their peers. Read more »
A key gift of our faith is that we don’t have to go it alone. Teamwork makes the dream work, and so we made it a team effort at the conference this morning.
Sunday morning started out with men’s and women’s sessions, relying on our brothers and sisters to be our teammates. Adam Bitter and Brian Greenfield led the men, and Megan Mastroianni and Sean Forrest were with the women. There was a little worship, a little fun, and a lot about identity as men and women of Christ and the virtue of chastity.
The men entering into worship:
And the women having some fun:
“This day, God is asking you to put away your old self and become who He created you to be,” Brian said told the men. Read more »
When was the last time you took advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation?
One of the staples of the Steubenville conferences – and the Catholic faith – is the opportunity to encounter God in the sacraments. If anyone ever asks you, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” you can confidently answer with a yes.
Through the sacraments, we come to God (and He comes to us) in tangible ways. And through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, you can hear that you have been forgiven.
Last night, to help prepare for the sacrament, Fr. Martin offered a short reflection. He shared a quote from St. Faustina, who said that all of your sins are but a drop in the ocean of God’s mercy. And after they’ve been confessed, they’re gone.
If you’re here at the conference this weekend, we hope you will take advantage of the sacrament, and have courage. The priests are here for you. Let God encounter you in the Sacraments. Read more »
It’s probably not a secret that we love social media – as the official #steubystl Social Media Team, we are all about sharing what God has been doing at these conferences through our Live Blog and accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, and Flickr.
Bl. James Alberione, founder of the Daughters of St. Paul (aka “the Media Nuns”), said that we need to pick up the camera and microphone and speak in the language of our own time. Social media is definitely one of the main languages of our time, and we love multiplying the good of the Gospel message by sharing it with you (and whoever else you might share it with through retweets and hashtags). Read more »
God is real? It sounds so simple, and yet it’s so complicated.
We live in a world full of questions, doubt, and atheism. So how do we know that God is real? And how do we know that His love is real?
Faith is not a feeling, and emotions are not enough. Faith and reason must go together. Emotion alone is not enough because our feelings can be deceptive. We can know what God has said through His revealed Word and the Church – and if our emotions don’t line up with His revealed Truth, then we have to look again.
And we know that God is real because everything that begins to exist must have a cause. “If you walked deep into the Amazon jungle, a place where no human being had ever been before,” Sean said, “and found a red rubber ball, wouldn’t you wonder where it came from? It didn’t put itself there.” Whatever created the universe must have been timeless and spaceless – eternal. And we call that timeless, spaceless, eternal being God. Read more »
It wasn’t quite a keynote. God is going to keep us on our toes this weekend.
We heard three short talks on who God is before moving in to a brief time of Eucharistic adoration. First, from Brian, we heard that God is strong. “The weight of responsibility [to try to be something we aren’t] feels heavier than the strength we have inside – but we don’t have to carry it all. God carries it for us.” Because God is strong.
Megan was up next, sharing how God is faithful. She reflected on how Psalm 37:4-5 has proven true in her own life. We need to trust in Him, and then He will act (but be careful to get that order right – it doesn’t say that He will act and then we trust). “Let’s anticipate God’s faithfulness. Thank Him in advance for His faithfulness to you.” Because God is faithful. Read more »
Once the doors opened and Adam Bitter and the band led us in a couple songs, our host for the weekend, Chris Padgett, got us started with a story about the perfect first date. He wooed the woman that one day became his wife, and now they’ve been married 23 years and have nine children. “I’m crazy about my wife,” he said, “but it blows my mind how crazy God is about me.”
And that’s what this weekend is all about – how crazy God Is (Isaiah 12:2) about each one of us.
Chris introduced the rest of the weekend’s team – Sean Forrest, Megan Mastroianni, Brian Greenfield, and Fr. Chris Martin. Then Bishop Rice asked every priest in the arena to stand. The bishop led us in a prayer and then he, and every priest present this weekend, gave us a blessing. Read more »
This morning, staff and volunteers gathered for Mass, to prepare for the conference and pray for all who are en route to Missouri State University. Bishop Rice, auxiliary bishop of St. Louis, celebrated the Mass, and chose to remember the saint of the day, St. Camillus de Lellis. Perhaps you aren't familiar with his story – which is "a good reason to celebrate him, so that we will know about him," Bishop Rice said.
St. Camillus is the patron saint of medical workers, and is a saint simply because he responded to the needs of his day. He lived out Christ’s command to take care of the sick.
“He saw the need, and he gave of himself,” Bishop Rice said. “And I think that’s a very simple definition of what it means to be holy in our day. You see the need, and you respond – not just with a human response, but with the heart of Christ.” Read more »
