Editor’s Note: This is the first day of Catholic Marriage Week, an important part of National Marriage Week! We will be publishing posts that celebrate the beauty of marriage from now until February 14th. Stay tuned!
Sonja was a chemistry professor when a car accident forced her to leave her work and reassess her life. “Looking back I could see that God was driving me toward the vocation of marriage,” says Sonja, 39, who was living in Mishawaka, Indiana, at the time. “ I talked to a priest who said I should go out and start dating, but I was not sure how to do that. I had a CatholicMatch gift card from a year back, so finally, I decided to use it.”
Serious about finding a spouse, Sonja composed a prayer to guide her:
"Lord God, help my future husband to locate me as soon as possible and help us to recognize that we are made for each other. Give him the courage to talk to me about marriage and our future life together. Help us to have a Christ-centered relationship. Help us to be a support for each other. Heal us. Protect us from evil, danger, and sin. Help me to be a Godly wife and mother. Help him to be a Godly husband and father. Help us to be happy in our life."
God, You have said that if the children ask for an egg, the Father won't give a scorpion. Inspired by this promise, Heavenly Father, I ask you for the blessing of a happy married life and also to remove all the scorpions from my life. I ask Thee—in the name of Jesus—Your Son and our Savior. Amen."
On July 14th, 2015, shortly after joining CatholicMatch, Thaddeus saw Sonja’s profile. “I saw someone who looked not only beautiful on the outside, but I also saw—in the little bit she wrote—a glimmer of simplicity that was attractive,” Thaddeus, 39, explains. “She was someone that I wanted to get to know better.”
A Skype blunder only brought them closer.
Thaddeus, who was attending graduate school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, sent Sonja a few questions. Sonja, thinking that he was “the cutest guy,” replied to his questions. “The next day I didn’t hear from him, so I thought, ‘He’s just curious; I am not going to hear from him again.’"
But a week later, Thaddeus answered Sonja telling her, “Pardon me, if I am a bit straightforward, but I am interested in getting to know you.”
Sonja appreciated his forthrightness, replying, “I like your attitude because we are on this website to find the right match.”
However, at that time Sonja was talking to another member. So she told Thaddeus, “I’m not sure about anything right now. We will pray and see how it goes. Our Heavenly Father has the best plan for us.”
They talked on messenger for several days, but Sonja couldn’t get a feel for who Thaddeus was, so she asked if they could Skype.
The evening came when they were supposed to meet face-to-face, but Thaddeus started to have technological issues. Skype wouldn't work for him! “I think she felt sorry for me because I was quite pitiful trying to get Skype to work,” Thaddeus recalls. But, “I found her to be very patient, and eventually, she said, ‘Here’s my phone number. Give me a call.' She was able to guide me through the whole process.”
Even though some of their conversation involved troubleshooting Skype, they talked for two hours. “We could see each other on Skype and hear by phone,” she says. “At the end of the conversation, he asked if he could come and see me.”
He had lots of first date jitters—but she didn't!
They decided that they would meet on August 3rd, 2015—the same day that Thaddeus was taking his final exam for his degree in speech pathology—at the Convent of Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration in Mishawaka.
Sonja remembers, “I left five minutes early, and I was a little nervous, so I was praying. But by the time that he reached the convent, I was not at all nervous.”
When Thaddeus arrived, he told Sonja that he “had a little something in his car” for her—flowers. “I almost asked, 'Now why did you buy flowers? It’s going to be a waste of money' [because they would die in a hot car], but I thought better of saying anything."
She sensed that Thaddeus was nervous, so she just put the roses and carnations in her car.
Thaddeus agrees, “There was surface nervousness." But, "in the depths of my soul, I was at peace.”
The two of them went to the convent and prayed in Adoration for about an hour, and then they went to Olive Garden to grab a bite to eat. “We finished at 4:30, and we joked that we could stay around and have
dinner,” she says.
Afterward, they went bowling. “We finally parted at 9:00 p.m. I had a great time, but I wasn't sure where this was going. Thaddeus told me, ‘Maybe we could talk later,' but I didn’t know how to interpret that,” she recalls.
“I was interested,” he says. “It was a question of getting to know Sonja better.”
She adds, “He was truly a gentleman, so I had hope.”
Developing the habit of praying together.
The couple says it wasn’t love-at-first-sight. It was the long conversations and praying together that fostered their relationship. They talked every day, and they got into the habit of praying the prayer that Sonja had composed. However, she kept secret the part of the prayer that said, “Give him the courage to talk to me about marriage and our future life together.”
As parts of the prayer were answered, those parts were replaced with things that fit their developing relationship.
"Does this mean we are engaged?"
Thaddeus had written to Sonja’s parents in India for permission to marry their daughter. “I had it in my mind late September that I wanted to propose to her,” he recalls. However, it took him until the beginning of October to get the letter sent off. The following weekend, Sonja came for a visit. When she arrived, they planned to go to Mass, but beforehand they Skyped with her parents.
“While Skyping with her parents—who understand English better than they can speak it— I was trying to speak slowly and clearly. I told them that I mailed a letter with a question in it.”
But Sonja took this as an opportunity to encourage Thaddeus! “She turned to me and said, ‘Well, you can ask my father now. He’s right there.’ I looked over at her, and I knelt down. I didn’t ask her directly. I asked her parents if I could marry her, and they said yes.”
On the way to Mass, Thaddeus asked, “Does this mean we are engaged?" Sonja said, "You heard my dad’s response. Is that sufficient for you?’” And it was.
After Mass, they went to Thaddeus’s home. Finally, it was here he brought out the ring and knelt down, just the two of them. He told Sonja, “I would love for you to be my helpmate to heaven. Will you marry me?” She said yes!
Married in the USA, they live-streamed the Mass to India.
On April 2, 2016, Fr. Richard Boyle celebrated a Nuptial Mass in the Extraordinary Form for Sonja and Thaddeus. (And as it had happened, Fr. Boyle had been in St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary with Thaddeus from 2003-2005.) Because some of Sonja's family couldn't be at the wedding in the United States though, they used Skype to live-stream the ceremony back to India.
The couple will never forget how lovely the day was. As they processed out, the Church doors opened and they were greeted by beautiful sight—gently falling snowflakes floating down to a white-blanketed churchyard.
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