"Why Doesn’t That Guy at Mass Message Me?!"
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On two occasions, Florida CatholicMatch members Sara and Greg ended up at the same Masses. Each of them had clicked on the other's profile, but neither of them chose to send a message. Sara, a piano teacher, preferred for the guy to reach out first, and she, at the time, was talking with another member.
"I saw his profile, in the summer of 2016, and within a week, I turned around and there was Greg sitting behind me at daily Mass," says Sara, 38. "It felt surprising to see him in person. As a side note, Greg doesn't remember it!"
On Divine Mercy Sunday 2017, Sara saw Greg a second time at a different Catholic Church. She watched him race across the church to get into the confession line. Feeling annoyed, she wondered, "Why didn't that guy write to me?"
To Greg's defense, he didn't contact Sara earlier because he was involved with another member.
The timing was right a year later.
In 2017, Sara looked at Greg's profile again. Seeing this; he messaged her.
"Funnily enough, I didn't know that when I clicked on his profile, he was going to get another notification!" she explains. "If I had known that he would see it, I probably wouldn't have done it!"
Within a few days of talking, Sara and Greg met in person on July 23, 2017. Sara says during their first date, she felt surprised by the number of positive and interesting details that Greg failed to share in his profile.
"He told me that he graduated from Franciscan University and that he'd traveled all over the world. But I didn't know that because he didn't write any of it in his profile!"
Sara, a convert to Catholicism in 2016 and a fan of Scott Hahn's writings, was excited to know that Greg took Hahn's classes and that he sold his teacher a house because Greg's a realtor. So many commonalities led them to discuss for six hours what mattered to each of them in life, religion, and politics. Sara shared with Greg that coming to the Catholic understanding of marriage and contraception sealed the deal for her in her eight-year-long process of joining the Catholic Church.
"The truth of the Catholic teachings on contraception struck me. I saw in my own life how the use of it had destroyed marriages of family and friends."
Though they discussed serious matters on their first date, it wasn't a somber affair. "Greg made me laugh so hard that I threw my head back and hit my head on a ledge behind me."
So, the conversation continued...
Within a few weeks, Greg and Sara were discussing each other's philosophy on how to school children. "We went deep, and I loved that because I am not a surface type of person," she says. "I felt like I could be myself with him. I'm Sicilian, and I have a lot of opinions!"
Greg is German and he liked that Sara was vocal and strong-willed. "We can talk and say how we feel. We never hide anything," they say.
By September, the couple had met each other's families. They were happy to see how well each of them meshed with the other's family.
Five months later, they had a Christmas Eve engagement!
Aware that Sara wanted to use her maternal and paternal grandmother's wedding rings, Greg asked Sara for the rings. He had plans to replace the peridot with a diamond. Still, Sara didn't suspect that he'd propose on Christmas Eve.
"It just wasn't on my mind because I had so much work to do because I was playing music for the Mass," she says.
After midnight, Sara and Greg took a walk on the church grounds. In front of the statue of Mary, Greg knelt down on one knee. "He began talking about how much he loved me," she remembers. "Then it dawned on me, 'Oh, my gosh he's proposing!"
On June 9, 2018, Sara and Greg professed their wedding vows in front of 75 friends and family at St. Timothy's in Lutz, Florida. "It was a beautiful wedding Mass. There were moments that really offered a witness to our faith, like when the priest asked, 'Are you willing to accept children from God?'"
Their eyes are wide open!
The couple—who now have a daughter named Philomena— share that marriage has been wonderful partly because they went into it with eyes wide open, expecting that they would encounter bumps in the road. Sara explains that everything is a little easier because she and Greg are best friends.
She recommends that members not settle and marry someone without sharing the same values. "Don't worry about interests because they fade and change. Values are everything!"