Adriana decided she was called to the single life. She had attended the National Singles Catholic Conference in San Diego in August 2014 and felt that she was being pulled in that direction.
“More than anything, I went into the conference praying with my whole heart. I wanted to fulfill the Lord’s will in my vocation,” she said. “That’s where I really felt this tug towards the consecrated life. At that conference, I said, ‘Okay. This is what You want.’ I remember being in Adoration, kneeling and just thanking Him for that peace.”
At the time, Adriana was on CatholicMatch, but she wasn’t too active. Spiritual director Father Clifton had encouraged her to go on the site, and for a while she didn’t have much luck. But about a week after the conference, she started getting more messages on the site. “I just looked up at the sky and said, ‘Oh Lord, You have a sense of humor!’” she remembered.
One of the men talking to Adriana was Mathew. She came up as one of his matches, and he reached out with a message.
“It was a very simple message,” she said. “Very classy. He just asked if we could get coffee, he was going to be down in my area.” Adriana is from Salinas, Calif. and Mathew is from about an hour and a half away. She told him she was discerning the single life, but agreed to dinner if it wasn’t going to be a romantic thing. Mathew understood and offered to help her connect with some people he knew in the consecrated single life.
They had dinner for the first time on August 13. “It was nice because we went into that dinner without the pressures of a date,” said Adriana. “I had no expectations. I told him from the beginning it was not going to be a romantic meeting. I was fooling myself, and so was he.”
“The actual eating part of dinner lasted about two minutes but we talked for about two hours,” Mathew said. “We talked about everything from the arts and music to different books in the Bible. I’ve never known anyone who could talk so freely about such a range of topics."
A few days later, Mathew made up a story about needing to be back in her area again. It was an excuse to make plans with her.
They went to art galleries and Mass together. “We saw a play and then had fried chicken at, 11 at night,” Mathew remembered.
Mathew knew he wanted to marry Adriana about a month after meeting her. “As soon as I met Adriana, all of my barriers disappeared and I was completely open and myself with her.”
Together, they can talk about everything from Disney songs to artwork to Adoration—but one important step needed to be taken before they began a relationship.
“I’m a huge advocate for courtship and dating with a purpose,” Adriana said. “Three years ago at World Youth Day in Spain, I heard Jason Everett give a chastity talk and that’s what changed my life.” Ever since then, Adriana has honored the belief of “dating with a purpose.” She is a chastity speaker and also works at a pro-life center, where she does abstinence presentations.
“I want to always have Christ in the center and to honor God,” Adriana explained of her view on courtship.
Mathew wrote Adriana a letter stating his intentions on September 6. “Okay,” Adriana said. “You know what you have to do at this point. You have to talk to my dad and you have to make this official. Let me think about this, let me pray about this.”
The next week was full of prayer and reflection for Adriana, trying to determine which vocation she was being invited to. “The moment I thought about letting Mathew in my heart and in my life, I felt complete peace,” Adriana said.
On September 19, Mathew visited her parents and asked for permission and a blessing to court her towards marriage. “That was so crucial to me,” she said. “Because I really and truly think that in a relationship when you want to honor God, you have to have religion involved.”
They were in the mall shopping for new glasses for Mathew when the couple ended up in a jewelry store looking at engagement rings. They laughed about how weird it was to be looking at engagement rings, but in fact, it did not feel weird at all.
Mathew contacted his uncle, a jeweler, and designed a custom ring. He took Adriana by surprise with a New Year’s Eve proposal.
“I had ideas of waiting until the 3..., 2..., 1... and then proposing, because it would be a big countdown all over the world, but when I got to her house at 5:30 in the evening, I just started getting so sick,” he explained. “I was so stressed out that I figured there was no way I could hold it together and play it cool for seven hours.” Adriana’s family was all around, aware that tonight was the big night. They asked him when he was going to do it and Mathew answered: “How about right now?”
He asked her as she stood in the kitchen stirring tea for him. Her family was around (with iPhones capturing the moment). “I just started saying whatever words were coming out of my head,” said Mathew.
“It was perfect and it was done so beautifully because it was with my family,” Adriana added.
I know I haven’t known her all that long, but at the same time, it really seems like forever,” said Mathew. “I can’t picture her not being in my life. I had always heard this before, but never quite bought into it—when you know, you know. I find that through all of the time that I’ve known Adriana, she is proof of the goodness of God and the love of the Blessed Virgin Mary to us.”
Editor's Note: Success stories are told from the perspective of the couples. While the story suggests a "vocation to the single life," the unconsecrated single life is not a vocation, as the Catholic Church formally defines it. To read more on the subject please see "Is Single Life A Vocation?" as well as other articles on the topic of vocations.
