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Fr. Scott VanDerveer shares a series of original interviews with parishioners who have survived losses of loved ones, health crises, addiction battles, & financial disasters. Through their stories you will find some of the wisdom and strength you need to endure the trauma of the COVID-19 Pandemic and all of life's challenges.
For almost 20 years, I felt drawn to the priesthood. It has always been on my horizon, something I couldn’t seem to forget about or ignore, despite my resistance to it.
In the meantime, I got a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from St. Bonaventure University, traveled to more than a dozen countries during my two years in the Up with People program, participated in a year of AmeriCorps VISTA where I was a grant writer for a hospice home, lived for a year in a rectory while I drove a school bus, managed a caseload of 200 foreign exchange students from 39 countries as a Regional Manager for EF Education, earned a Masters in Religious Education at Boston College and taught high school religion for five years at a Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Boston.
All this continued until, finally, I took a middle school teaching position closer to home in upstate New York while I took a closer look at what it would mean to follow the pull I have felt for so long toward religious life. With that decision, I began an adventure to discover the path God has envisioned for my life.
I spent a year at the St. Isaac Jogues House of Discernment where I lived with other seminarians from the Diocese of Albany who were in preparation for the seminary. The space I had there to pray and live in community helped me better attune myself to God’s voice and gave me the courage to leave my teaching job behind.
In 2009, I returned to Boston as a seminarian at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary and four years later was ordained as a priest for the Diocese of Albany on June 8, 2013 at age 38.
I was a parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Parish in Oneonta, N.Y., a small city with two colleges in a rural setting, and since November 2015 I have been the pastor of two parishes: St. Mary’s in Coxsackie, N.Y., and the Church of St. Patrick in Ravena, N.Y., both situated in towns on the Hudson River about two hours north of New York City.
My life so far has been rich and full, but I have a sense that the best is yet to come.