By Michael Gresham
The Texas Catholic
GRAPEVINE — With prayer, worship, and fellowship, thousands of college-aged Catholics gathered in north Texas to start the new year with a call to deepen their faith and seek a personal encounter with Christ.
The gathering took place Jan. 1-5 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, one of three host sites for SEEK 2026, along with Columbus, Ohio, and Denver. The conference drew an estimated 26,000 participants across the three cities.
The annual conference is organized by FOCUS, an international Catholic outreach ministering on more than 200 college campuses in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe, as well as at around 20 parishes, OSV News reported. The theme for SEEK 2026 was “To the Heights,” a favorite exhortation of the recently canonized St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, an avid mountaineer and patron of young adults, according to the OSV News report.
One highlight of this year’s event was a pre-recorded message from Pope Leo XIV, who told SEEK 2026 attendees to “Be open to what the Lord has in store for you.”
As they “draw close to Jesus” during SEEK 2026, Pope Leo urged attendees, “Do not be afraid to ask him what he is calling you to,” whether that vocation is the priesthood, religious life, or marriage and family life, according to OSV News.
“If you sense the Lord calling you, do not be afraid,” Pope Leo said. “Once again, let me emphasize that he alone knows the deepest, perhaps hidden, longings of your heart and the path that will lead you to true fulfillment. Let him lead and guide you.”
Encountering Christ
On Jan. 4, Bishop Edward J. Burns celebrated Mass for participants at the SEEK 2026 conference in Grapevine, calling on attendees to embrace missionary discipleship rooted in encounter with Christ.
“We are missionary disciples, because we have encountered our Lord, Jesus Christ,” he said in his homily. “Evangelization is an invitation. Our goal is not to win arguments. Our goal is to win hearts, and we win hearts by holiness, by our expressions of charity, and by our words of clarity, speaking the truth.”
Bishop Burns urged students to embrace the moment as an opportunity to seek the Lord and boldly live their faith, despite societal pressures.
“Be missionary disciples, seek him out, kneel before him, then offer your gifts, your talents, and your very life to him,” he said.
At the SEEK conference, participants are invited to encounter Christ through talks, workshops, daily Mass, eucharistic adoration, reconciliation, and fellowship.
For Jazzmin Torres, a Southern Methodist University sophomore, the decision to attend her first SEEK conference came after hearing about it from friends within the Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU.
“I have always wanted to explore my faith a bit deeper,” Torres said. “I felt like there was something that was kind of missing, and I felt that SEEK was probably the best way to find that missing piece.”
Torres said the biggest lesson she learned at SEEK is that, regardless of personal or societal challenges, God’s love remains constant, and he desires a relationship with everyone.
“The only step that you have to take is just to accept that, work towards that, and build that up,” Torres said, “because it’s a two-way street.”
Michael Rangel, a freshman at the University of Dallas and a parishioner at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, said he was drawn to his first SEEK conference as he looked to build upon the faith experiences he had encountered at the Dallas Catholic Youth Conference as a high school student.
“Honestly, DCYC was just an amazing high school experience,” Rangel said, “and I wanted to have that same kind of taste, that same kind of feeling, here in college.”
Rangel said the speakers’ testimonies and lessons had an impact on him.
“I have felt that there is a lot of wisdom coming from the speakers with their different testimonies and their lessons,” Rangel said, adding that he felt a personal connection with those bits of wisdom. “I feel God calling me, calling me to act upon it, upon the things I’ve learned here.”
Rangel said he hopes to carry those lessons and fire for his faith forward into his everyday life.
“I want to take back this spiritual fortitude I’m building here that’s going to allow me to excel, not only just here, but in the other areas of my life, back at home and back at UD,” he said.
Johannes Paulo Nicart, a junior at the University of Texas at Dallas, attended with the hope the conference would help him grow his faith.
“I’ve been learning a lot of little things that are building up and hopefully will lead to a great push leading me on to a new level of holiness,” he said.
Sarah Pecoraro, a junior at SMU and parishioner at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Rockwall, said the opportunity for faith and fellowship drew her to this year’s SEEK conference. Like Rangel, Pecoraro fondly recalled her experiences as a high school youth at DCYC, and she hoped to build upon those through the SEEK conference.
“It’s just a joy to come together and be with all these people,” she said. “We’re having this amazing chance to talk about our faith … It has been so fruitful, and it has allowed a lot of the things we have learned to stick and become a part of our lives.”
Echoing Bishop Burns’ words, Pecoraro called SEEK “a gift.”
“I see the knowledge, the joy, and all the fun, but there is also reverence and adoration,” she said. “It’s all these things — some of them are quiet and some of them are loud — and it’s just such a beautiful combination.”
The Grapevine event marked the fourth SEEK conference that Kelly Pham, a senior at the University of Texas at Dallas and president of the Newman Ministry at UTD, has attended.
“I think it’s an opportunity to take a break away from school and continue encountering Christ deeply,” Pham said, adding that participants experienced the pinnacle — the source and summit — of the conference Jan. 3. “We went to adoration and got to see that Jesus is real, and he’s totally present in the Eucharist; and that … was a profession of love, of total sacrifice for us.”
Pham added that the experience does not end when the conference does.
“It’s about sharing God’s love with others through what we’ve learned from these talks, through the encounters that we’ve had with religious sisters and priests,” she explained. “It’s about taking all of that and sharing it with others who don’t know God’s love.”
Cutline for featured image: Bishop Edward J. Burns, center, poses with students and representatives from colleges and entities within the Diocese of Dallas who attended the SEEK 2026 conference at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine Jan. 1-5. Grapevine was one of three host sites for SEEK 2026, along with Columbus, Ohio, and Denver. The conference drew an estimated 26,000 participants across the three cities. (MICHAEL GRESHAM/The Texas Catholic)
