What happens when God wants to bless us gazillions of times?
Every teen wants to belong, yet the pace of life, the societal pressure, the mountain of parental expectations, and the digital landscape are constantly reminding them of how they fail to measure up, and all of those things can add up to a sense of unworthiness. So, how do you counter this rising tide of isolation?
To register your children for Steubenville Conferences 2025, Email us at oneinthespiritgroup@gmail.com
“Illuminate” John 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
This summer 9 kids and 2 chaperones from OITS drove to MA, to attend the Steubenville East Retreat ‘Illuminate’ and had the experience of finding themselves among a sea of thousands of their peers.
Beyond judgement, performance, pride, all strangers to each other, slowly found the freedom to breathe, open up and experience that they are actually loved as they are, where they are.
The Conference constituted: - Prayer, Scriptures, Talks, Holy Adoration, Community Sharing through Small Groups and very vibrant Praise and Worship with music.
The topic Illuminate’s experience can be shared as follows: -
God Illuminates
Femineity Illuminated
Masculine Illuminated
The Road Illuminated
God Illuminated – David Calavitta, opened the session with his keynote speech, making us reflect on how the blind man who wanted to see, was asked by Jesus, “What do you want me to do for you?” -- some of the reflections as presented were all about how God is willing to give back gazillion times, but if you put zero effort you get back zero but if you put just 1 % effort you can get gazillion times more, and all you need to do is make a start. That’s why we were asked “What do you want Jesus to do for you?”
Femineity Illuminated: Noelle Garcia, the keynote speaker for the women session started with her personal experience on Mother Mary, and how she will bring you closer to Jesus…
Retreat Playlist >>
Her session was amazing. She illuminated on the fact that how “Women” – are made with a lot of capacity, we give space to many things in our lives – how we are more compassionate, forgiving, sentimental, more enduring. Yet we are harsh to ourselves and how its important to renounce the sin of self-doubt and self-infliction. We have many superpowers, so much so that God destined Mother Mary to be the Queen of Heaven and Earth and made her responsible for bring forth the salvation for the world with how she bore Jesus and gave him for all.
Masculine Illuminated: David Calavitta came back on the men’s session and shared about how we are created in image of God, the reason for lot of sin and disorder in the world is men are not taking responsibility for their actions, walking away from responsibility from women with abortion, divorce…society is telling men they can pick their own gender, it is wrong we are created in image in God we have to own to responsibility of taking care of those that God had put in our care….drawing closer to God in prayer and asking the Holy Spirit for assistance.
The Road Illuminated: After a series of many, many reflections, reconciliation, special sessions on how to illuminate and bring to light all the darkness of self… it was like-Hey! what do we do now? Almost like how the apostles felt after Jesus died, “All is good but now what”
What Next?
The teens were made to understand that almost like the Gospel from John Ch 12 vs 35 -36. “ The light will be among you only a little while. Walk while you have the light so that darkness may not overcome you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where he is going. While you have the light believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light”
So essentially, the kids were asked to decide the destination because, if you don’t know where you are going you will not reach there.
And here are some 4 essential tools that were provided to discern – essentially it was like a Roadmap for the next steps.
1. Understanding the teachings of the church – some examples on this were - a) read the bible, b) know the catechism
2. Community Fellowship - Jesus did not do anything alone he always had a community around him, find your community
3. Mass – daily mass or regular Sunday mass ensures you have Jesus in his most sacred self in communion with you to show you the way
4. Daily prayer – even if it is for 5 minutes….but doing it daily. Some folks reflect and do personal prayers and works fine, while others do the rosary, you need to have your own personal journey with the Lord.
In Conclusion….
At the end we were to make our choices of making that 1% effort so that we get our gazillion blessings in return.
Bishop William D. Byrne, …. Gave the best analogy to summarize it all, with his reflection on the feeding of the 5000 gospel readings…. the Bishop shared his perspective on how the boy who had the 2 fish and 5 loaves was the hero who gave it all, he did not say, let me keep 1 fish and 1 loave for myself….and so we have the same responsibility of how we are in this journey of life expected to give it all.
It is, as if creating a mosaic (he brought in the example of the Immaculate conception at Washington DC image) and said we are in this journey to create this giant mosaic of our life, and how it is that every piece of the mosaic is doing its part to create the pretty picture… these pieces in the mosaic are - pieces of our family life, pieces of community life, pieces of our friends, pieces of our role as students, pieces of what we do at work, -- all these pieces need to shine as much and be glued together perfectly to create the perfect Mosaic and it can be done only through Jesus who in Mass meets with us as his full body, blood, soul and divinity.
What an Awesome message and what a great invite to all who attended (some 2000+ of us in the vast stadium of Mass Mutual in Springfield.
The band was incredible…. Rocking, reflective, right for the kids, uplifting their spirits in a very special way….
Some of us really felt Jesus was walking by us, in the Holy Adoration….
When we were driving back, all the kids were tired and yet chirpy going with their own degree of Openness and Peace.
Almost everyone wanted to sign up for next year, while they also agreed to have a follow up on the and we were so grateful to God who kept all of us safe under his mantle of protection. We thank you all in OITS and the parents of our Teen kids that kept us in prayers. We will keep this light burning…
Testimonials
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Joanne
"...My favorite part of the retreat was the 2nd day specifically the adoration. As soon as the priest brought out the blessed Sacrament, I feel like God touched me and sent the holy spirt towards me as I started crying the whole time the Sacrament was out! God made me realize the path I was heading to and he made me come out of it was he knew it was going to be a bad one. Excluding the retreat, I was very happy with the company! Everyone was so sweet and kind, and overall I loved going here and I will definitely want to attend next year!"
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Nathan
"The Steubenville retreat was an amazing way for myself to unwind from all the distractions I had been experiencing previously. I had been experiencing this previously. I had an amazing experience with God during the adoration, singing, and talk given, I also made amazing friends during the retreat. I found my personality and religious experiences very similar to many others. I learned many lessons from the retreat but one thing that has sentimentally been stuck to my heart is that God words miracles and has a vision and destiny for everyone. We are all made with an image we are not a design which god imagined to make. We are made for a purpose."
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Gareth
"Thank you aunty for taking care of me and giving me everything I wanted it was really fun. The retreat was good and I learnt a lot of stuff. The worship was really good and I had fun with the group. Thank you aunty for the wonderful time"
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Ashley
"Even though I went to steubenville last year each year, it was such a unique and personal experience. Steubenville is a place where I formed, not only many relationships with the people around me, but formed a new relationship with God. Being at steubenville you experience a different sort of peace that you don’t get anywhere else, and every single aspect of the retreat is so tailored towards teenagers that it is extremely engaging and you never find your mind wandering."