A record 90 high school-aged young men attended the Quo Vadis camp held July 31 to Aug. 3 at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The annual gathering, sponsored by The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, is designed to help young men discern God’s will in their lives. “Quo Vadis” is a Latin phrase meaning, “Where are you going?”

“The goal is not to force someone to be a priest, but to give them the space where they can put away things of this world, and be able to be quiet and listen and see where the Lord might be leading them,” said Father Conrad Murphy, the chaplain at the Catholic Student Center at the University of Maryland at College Park, who was among the priests helping to lead the Quo Vadis camp.

He credited the record turnout to the Catholic summer programs for youth at area parishes, including St. John Francis Regis in Hollywood, Maryland; Sacred Heart in La Plata; Our Lady of Mercy in Potomac; and St. Patrick’s in Rockville.

“It’s just a great sign of hope,” he said. He added, “Being (here) at the seminary, they can see what the life is like.”

The Quo Vadis camp included Masses, talks, a Eucharistic procession and Adoration, and times for the young men to walk through the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes together, praying the rosary. The teens also played football, volleyball and the disc sport Ultimate, and they squared off in dodgeball with the participating priests and seminarians. About 30 seminarians and 15 priests, including five of the archdiocese’s newly ordained priests, helped out at the camp during the week.

Angela Busby, the camp’s coordinator and the director of youth ministry at St. Peter’s Parish in Olney, described the participants as “just young men who want to go deeper in their faith and are open to where the Holy Spirit is in their lives.”

She said that a high point of the gathering was when the young men participated in an evening Eucharistic procession and then took turns praying during an all-night Adoration.

At an Aug. 2 Mass for the campers at St. Mary’s Chapel near the grotto, Father James Morgan – who was ordained as one of 10 new priests for the archdiocese in June and now serves as a parochial vicar pro-tem at St. Peter’s Parish on Capitol Hill – encouraged the camp’s participants to emulate St. Peter in being men of action moving toward Jesus in their lives.

“My prayer for all of us here is that no matter what the Lord is calling us to, that we take a step toward Him… We can walk in faith toward the Lord,” he said.

At the end of Mass, Father Morgan said, “Brothers, trust in the Lord, take steps toward Him, and know He is there for you, the Blessed Mother as well.”

Elliott Kirwan, a member of St. Peter’s Parish in Olney who just graduated from Blake High School in Silver Spring and will be studying physics at the University of Notre Dame this fall, was attending the Quo Vadis camp for the third time.

“It’s just a really great time to get away from the routine parts of life and focus on what’s really important,” he said. “The community here is amazing. All the guys here are focused on Christ… It’s a really powerful retreat.”

Kirwan said one key thing he has learned at the Quo Vadis camp is “we really only need to know the next step, and have the faith in God to trust His plan for the full journey.”

Sam Norton, who is homeschooled and lives in Bowie, said, “I love the priests and seminarians, how they’re solid in their faith… The thing I love most is the brotherhood they have.”

Colin Snyder, a seminarian for the archdiocese and member of Sacred Heart Parish in Bowie, attended Quo Vadis two times as a high school student, and has helped at the camp four times as a seminarian.

“From a young age, I had the desire to be a priest,” he said. “I was an altar server and saw my pastor, and said, ‘I want to do that.’”

Snyder said it was meaningful for him to come to the Quo Vadis retreat as a teen, and during Adoration, “to pray before the Lord about the desire in my heart to be a priest.” He said it was also inspiring “to meet seminarians who were in college, and who were holy and who were cool… It made my desire to be a priest to be a more realistic goal. I saw I could do this.”

Another archdiocesan seminarian helping out at the retreat, Deacon Martin Begley, attended the Quo Vadis camp three times during his high school years and has helped there three times as a seminarian.

The parishioner of St. Peter’s in Olney said, “The biggest thing (was), it made seminary seem like an option, that I could enjoy that. It made seminary real.”

Seeing the large number of youth participating in the Quo Vadis camp was encouraging, he said, adding, “I hope it plants a seed, that those who have a vocation are in a position to say ‘yes.’”

Father Mark Ivany, the director of priest vocations for the archdiocese, said that Mount St. Mary’s is a “perfect setting” for the camp, and he noted how in Adoration, the teens have the chance to silently pray before the Lord, joined by their peers.

“It’s important for young men to know there are others out there who put their relationship with Christ first,” he said.

Father Scott Woods, the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in La Plata, said the number of young men taking part in Quo Vadis this summer was “just amazing. You see the work of the Holy Spirit.” He added the campers included Hispanic, Asian and African American teens. “It’s the most diverse group I’ve seen (here). It looks like the archdiocese.”

The priest said he hopes that the young men participating in the Quo Vadis camp “will hear the voice of the Lord calling them to a deeper relationship with the Lord, (and) from that they will learn to trust Him and to love Him and to serve Him, in whatever vocation they are called.”