Welcome to SEEK25!

The greeting boomed out across the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah to thunderous applause. 17,000 attendees, including 10,000 college students, hundreds of priests, religious sisters and brothers, Catholic missionaries, benefactors, and parishioners from across the country, had gathered for this annual conference presented by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS).

This conference was especially meaningful because it was the 10-year anniversary of my first SEEK conference in 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee, back when I was a college student myself and had a profound experience that week. As the conference title hints, people like me came seeking God and hoping He would show up.

Well, God ALWAYS shows up. Ten years ago, Fr. Mike Schmitz gave a talk called The Hour That Will Change Your Life, and boy did it. I encountered the Lord that night in Adoration and took a big step in opening my heart to His love. It was amazing!

Over the last ten years, I’ve been to seven more FOCUS conferences (this being my eighth), and each time I’m in a different “place” spiritually. Though none of them may have felt as life-changing as SEEK 2015, God has always shown up and worked in my heart.

This year, the most impactful session I attended was a talk on prayer by Dr. Edward Sri, Sr. Vice President of Apostolic Outreach for FOCUS. He had this reflection on Mother Teresa’s prayer with a message to her sisters, based on Jesus’ words from the cross “I Thirst.” Mother Teresa explains how Jesus wasn’t just referencing his need for water, but his thirst for souls, for you and me. So when we pray or go to something like SEEK, it is not that we first come seeking Him, but that He first seeks US. Jesus tells us in the gospel of John, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (John 15:16).

It also is a theme on pilgrimage, that we travel long distances to another country or another continent to seek God and encounter Him. We also find that the Lord “travels the farthest”—from heaven down to earth—to find us and to show us His love.

As 2025 begins, I pray that you seek God who loves you so much, whether on pilgrimage across the world or in the Adoration chapel across town. I also hope that you (and I) come to know that God is seeking us, too.

Kelly Guilbeau is a Harvest Journeys Travel Specialist, based in Dallas

Harvest Journeys is a travel company that has been dedicated exclusively to Catholic pilgrimages for 38 years. Our passion is facilitating faith encounters of God’s presence for pilgrims and communities.

As we enter the new year and celebrate the Jubilee Holy Year 2025, it’s a wonderful time to consider the ancient practice of pilgrimage. There are many exciting opportunities for 2025 and beyond including Rome for the Jubilee events, Greece and Turkey to follow in the footsteps of St Paul, Marian Shrines, the Holy Land, the Camino, Ireland, and even Australia, South Korea, and Japan.