Father Matthew Devereux, LC, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on the 28th of July 1970 as the fifth of a seven-boy family. After a year of Economics and a year of Law at Otago University in his home town of New Zealand he discovered his vocation and entered the Legion of Christ at 20 years of age in the Novitiate of the Legion in Connecticut.  In 1994 after his two year novitiate and a year of classical studies went to Rome, for his studies in philosophy and theology obtaining a bachelors degree in both fields, at the Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. He has worked with young people in the US, Chile and Italy and is now working with youth in Cracow, Poland.

Deep, soft and tons of it - powder snow, the best! Clicking on my skis and quickly getting over to the chairlift I was up at the peak within minutes. Raising my head to an awe-inspiring view, I pondered the untouched beauty of creation, and thought to myself, "Here I am once again, in God's country." 

My childhood memories are filled with these experiences of nature's majesty: mirror-like lakes adorned with the jewels of deserted islands, virgin beaches with coarse, soaring cliffs and the grandeur of giant mountain ranges eternally veiled with immovable glacier blankets and ice fields. All these glimpses of God touched my soul to its very fibers with an interested, yet cautious love for a God, who taught me to love Him first in what could be seen. 

Being raised in a family of nine, I was constantly surrounded by people, movement and happenings, for which I am gratefully indebted. Dull moments were seldom. I learned quickly to socialize and make friends out of strangers and keep enemies to a minimum. 

Receiving a Catholic education in five schools and having contact with nuns, brothers, priests, bishops, a cardinal and even the Pope had a great influence on me in the years to come, particularly when I had time and greater maturity to reflect upon them and realize their value. I well remember the fire of school spirit which was enkindled in my young heart at a boarding school for six hundred rugby-crazed teenagers. But more than the unforgettable spirit, it was the presence of a religious community, my friendships with the resident priests and the immeasurable blessing of daily Mass that left an indelible mark upon my life. 

It was in my sophomore year in high school when the reality and the implications of the priestly vocation hit home. My older brother Peter felt the calling to the priesthood and traveled to the other side of the planet to discover the voice's source. Then he settled down to seminary life with a young religious congregation called the Legionaries of Christ seventeen thousand kilometers from home. Peter and I had been very close since our early youth and I suddenly, selfishly, felt abandoned. Lying in bed the night that I heard about his decision I could not hold back the tears. 

Like an author, anxious to reach and discover the climax to his own drama, more pages were quickly traced out in the short story of my life with the quick-dry ink of my last years in high school, university lectures, rugby training and a gradual distancing from the One for Whom I was searching. 

But through it all, God made the most of human experience to speak to me and lead me, slowly but surely, to himself. A particular turning point in my life occurred when I was visiting Peter at the seminary in Rome. I was suddenly offered the opportunity to work as a counselor at the boys' academy in the United States. It was an offer I could not refuse. It was precisely what I had been waiting for as I could not take much more of the university environment which I had put up with for two years and I knew there was something else much greater that I could do with my life. 

I vividly remember stepping out of the terminal at O'Hare Airport into a vicious Chicago wind that cut right through me. Getting onto a bus, my adventure took me two hours further north into what seemed to me to be Siberia. One word suffices to sum up that relentless environment: ICE!  

Instructions were to get off and wait outside a certain restaurant in a small town called Janesville. A car pulled up and out stepped a well-dressed young man who somehow knew who I was and off we went. This whole situation was all so very new and unknown to me. Yet, I felt completely at ease, knowing that I was in good hands - because I knew they were God's hands. 

Entering Oaklawn Academy was like crossing the threshold into a whole new world. More than merely leaving behind the arctic temperatures that greeted me upon my arrival in the snowy Midwest, I sensed that as I walked through the door, I was leaving behind the spiritual coldness in which I had been living, running from Christ in vain. Something or Someone was inviting me to leave behind that cold darkness of the old man's world and step into the warmth and light of the new man in Christ. 

Like a child in a toy store, I wanted to try everything in this new world. Two hundred Mexican adolescents were to become my new and ever-present companions for the next four months. The experience of helping them in their formation did much more for me than I am sure it did for them. I was now sharing my faith, something that I had never done before because of a blindness to its value. I learned to surrender this God-given treasure to them. This richness that had always been within me was now, at long last, being unveiled in a very simple and spontaneous way to these young souls all around me. 

The priests and religious living with me and working with the boys were changing my life and the entire vision I had of it. Like St. Paul I had been struck down from my horse, and little by little the scales were falling from my eyes. I discovered that only in God can we discover the full satisfaction that we so long for in this short walk upon earth. 

The few months that I spent in the academy flew past and yet much was received which would enable me to continue on my journey which would now become more demanding.  

My time as a counselor had come to an end with the finish of the academy's school year. I heard Someone knocking at the door, but I did not want to answer. I knew a decision had to be made about my own vocation, but I did not want to make it - at least, not yet - even though in some mysterious way, long before, it had already been made. For I can remember leaving New Zealand and telling my family and friends that I would be back in a few months, while my heart was telling me that I was not going to return. 

The summer candidacy program at the Legionaries' novitiate in Connecticut was beginning and I knew that it was there that my journey's next step had to be taken. I could not deny the reality of what God was asking of me. I knew what He wanted. 

Still, I would not budge, and happily waited around the academy to help the boys prepare for their return home. God sensed my fear and so He made it all very easy for me - I suppose because He knew that I had already made up my mind to follow Him. Another young man who had also been working in the academy wanted to go to the candidacy and somehow, he knew to ask me if I would like to go with him. The answer was a quick and ready "yes". 

Within days, I found myself entering the Legionaries' candidacy program in Cheshire, Connecticut. What a life-changing experience! A new world, a new life, the confirmation of what I had long suspected. God was calling me to be a Legionary of Christ. Soon, all my doubts and fears had simply disappeared. With joy and peace of heart I decided to stay. I had put my hand to the plow and never looked back. There was no need to. I had finally arrived home.