WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Why does God care about us and what does Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man in the Gospels to follow him mean for our lives? Thousands of college students, gathered in the nation’s capital Jan. 3 and pondered these questions as part of an evening of reflection and eucharistic adoration at the Fellowship of Catholic University Students’ 2025 SEEK conference.
The second evening of the Jan. 2-5 event virtually united the roughly 17,000 participants at FOCUS’ main SEEK conference (Jan. 1-5) in Salt Lake City with the 3,000 attendees at the first ever satellite SEEK location in Washington. Msgr. James P. Shea, president of the University of Mary, opened the evening with a talk drawing on themes from English Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” marking what would have been Tolkien’s 133rd birthday. His talk was streamed from Salt Lake City and was followed by a reflection on the rich young man in the Gospels from Sister Miriam James Heidland in Washington streamed back to SEEK attendees in Utah’s capital.
“Why does God care about us?” Msgr. Shea asked attendees, calling this a “worthy question” in our fallen world. He reflected on the depravity in the world and how many are “dead in our sins and transgressions.” He drew a comparison between people and Tolkien’s orcs, governed by dark and hidden sinful pleasures.
God “created the human race very good,” Msgr. Shea said. He said God imprinted human beings with “his own image and likeness” and that “it would be an affront to the honor of God that one of his creations should be so destroyed by the enemy.”
But Msgr. Shea said there was the dilemma of how God might spark love and genuine faith in human beings “without compelling allegiance which would destroy the gift of freedom which they had precisely because of his image in them.”
So God would become one of us, he said. In doing so, the priest explained, God was “invading enemy territory” in stealth, coming quietly into our fallen world through the Virgin Mary “in the poverty of the stable, in the dusty obscurity of the workman’s shop.”
He quoted St. Athanasius’ insight: “The Son of God became man so that we might become God.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church follows this quote with one from St. Thomas Aquinas: “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”
He read a portion of “The Ride of the Rohirrim” — a chapter from Tolkien’s “The Return of The King” — in which the host of Rohan were singing with joy as they vanquished the forces of darkness.
We honor God, Msgr. Shea emphasized, when “we switch our allegiance from the usurper to the true king” and repent of our sins.
“Every time we repent,” he said, “there is joy in heaven.”
“God’s own Son is one of us, and we’re the joy set before him,” he concluded. “That’s why God cares about us.”
Following Msgr. Shea’s talk, Sister Miriam, a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, meditated on the story of the rich young man in the Gospel who asked Jesus, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “If you would enter life, keep the Commandments.” Then the young man said to Jesus, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”
Sister Miriam emphasized how in the Gospel of Mark’s account, after the young man says this, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” In this exchange, she said, Jesus is pointing out the needs the young man suffers “out of a look of love.”
Jesus said to the young man, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The young man walks away grieving after Jesus’ invitation. Sister Miriam pointed out that many have this same response to Jesus. She said we “make assumptions about the invitations Jesus makes to us and we walk away sad.”
She noted that the rich young man in the account didn’t turn back to Jesus and say, “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to give away my things, I don’t know what I’d do without them. Can you please help me?”
She challenged those gathered to evaluate “what is getting in the way of deeper intimacy” with Jesus in their lives. The Lord is speaking to our needs out of “tremendous love” and understanding, she said, and we can call on him for help to accept the invitations he extends to us.
The evening concluded for the students with an hour of Eucharistic adoration and confessions.
There were also prayer teams available where students could bring their prayer intentions to two of their peers who would join them in prayer.
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