SEEK25 “Road Sign”

One version of a childhood verse I still remember makes the claim, “The first’s the worst, the second’s the same. The third’s the best of any game!” Those lines came back to me several times during the first week of January while attending my third conference of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Called SEEK25, the massive gathering was held at the downtown Salt Palace Convention Center on January 1-5. When visitors to Booth #928, the Portsmouth Abbey vocation gathering spot, heard that I had attended SEEK23 and SEEK24, both held in St. Louis, they pressed me and asked how, in my opinion, the three conferences compared. It’s not really a fair question and I somehow turned the topic to other subjects. Like vocations.

The Salt Palace, venue for SEEK25
The mission of the annual SEEK conferences, and of FOCUS in general, is not on vocations specifically. As sponsors, we receive mailings throughout the year with updates on speakers, programming, podcasts, films, and impact sessions, and to quote an encouraging letter received last August, “Together, we have brought more than 70,000 young people into a relationship with Jesus. What’s more, we have equipped them to spread the Gospel to a broken world in desperate need of the Good News. It’s clear how committed you are to ensuring that our Church has a thriving future.” The letter was signed by Curtis A. Martin, who founded FOCUS twenty-six years ago, and whose presence and influence were very much in evidence throughout the entire week. True to its name, the organization is spread across the U.S., serving over 200 college and university campuses, including 46 schools in our East region alone, one of the four areas into which the organization divides its program nationally.
SEEK25 Lobby entrance to Main HallIn the Diocese of Providence, we have had contact with the groups at Brown University, the University of Rhode Island and Providence College. In August 2023, with several temporarily available dormitories on an attractive and empty campus, we were pleased to host about 150 missionary students at a FOCUS “BootCamp.” The “brains behind the boots” was our friend and a friend of the Portsmouth Institute, Ben Kelly, Regional Director of the East Region. Last year he and his family relocated to Pawtucket where they welcomed their fourth child, Rose, whose birth in late December prevented Ben from attending SEEK25. On the closing day of BootCamp, after the obligatory group photo on the church steps and a send-off blessing from Abbot Michael, the students headed off, most of them straight back to their college campuses, more secure and stronger in their faith and resolve, prepared spiritually and mentally for their ministerial work ahead.Each of the previous SEEK get-togethers drew approximately 20,000 participants in one place. It may be disappointing to read that only 17,000 were in Salt Lake City this month, which sounds like a drastic backslide. However, a new plan this time around saw the addition of Washington, D.C., as a satellite city with a venue holding 3,000 people which, together with the Salt Lake City attendees, brings the total right back up to 20,000. In addition, there is a burgeoning international aspect to FOCUS with yet another satellite city, the first in Europe, Cologne, Germany, boosting the number by 500. These attendance figures are daunting when one realizes that these Catholic faith-based events take place in the final days of an academic Christmas break, attracting a very narrow demographic of 18-to-22-year-olds of college age who must have other vacation options staring them in the face. I gauge a lot of numerical things by comparing them with the population of my little hometown in Northeastern Pennsylvania in 1970, the year I graduated from high school. Besides me, there were 6058 residents and I think I knew most of them, if not by name, at least through their family. Having two newspaper delivery routes also helped. So, in the Salt Palace Convention in early January were almost 3 times the number of people who lived in my hometown.
Brother Sixtus with (l. to r.) Luciano Jacques, Francis Brissette, John Paul Brissette of St. Luke’s Parish Youth Ministry, Barrington Rhode Island. (image: Kat Brissette)Our ten-foot-square booth was fairly centrally located in an area appropriately called Mission Way, where over a hundred purveyors created a lively indoor marketplace offering services and service opportunities, goods, and information on more vocation possibilities than one thought was possible to exist. A small pickleball court was busy from morning until night and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee drew strollers into a number of booths. Each day began with Mass with an invited bishop as the principal celebrant, other bishops as concelebrants, and an estimated 489 concelebrating priests on the opening day. Each day’s Mass concluded with the entire arena reciting the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel for Personal Protection, followed by the Salve Regina. After some time for quiet private meditation, it was a long walk back to the booth to begin greeting visitors, talking about our abbey and school, explaining the Rule of St. Benedict to one young man, the Latin Mass to another, and the cult of relics to a few more, all based on questions they brought to me.
At SEEK25 (l. to r.): Br. Sixtus Roslevich, Aaron Carter, Abbot Gregory Mohrman,
Fr. Jairon Olmos, Michael StaffordThere were other Benedictine monks at SEEK25 from monasteries which I have visited and gotten to know well: St. Meinrad’s in Indiana; St. Vincent’s in Latrobe PA; Conception Abbey in Missouri; St. Benedict’s and Benedictine College in Kansas – all of us casting our nets into the deep. The best we vocation directors can do is to hope and pray that seeds have been planted during the time spent among the young men, on the cusp of adulthood with a college degree on the horizon, and “seeking” to discern the path they should try to follow. Some have their minds made up already and only need to decide which order to enter, others need to keep seeking. The journey to Utah also afforded two chances to visit the magnificent 1909 Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, an experience that provided reflections I hope to formulate for a future issue of The Current.

---