It was a Friday the 13th in January of this year and superstition says one should be cautious to avoid bad luck. But the Catholic Church says superstition is not reality, and it’s the latter belief that John and Mary held to. The young couple from Minnesota made Friday the 13th their first date.
“It wasn’t bad luck at all, but rather the greatest blessing I will ever receive,” John said later. The groundwork for their January dinner date had been put in place several weeks earlier, when Mary found him based on her match selection criteria. They made contact and began talking just prior to Christmas.
When they met the connection was instant and profound. “We had dinner and talked for four hours, John recalled. “It took as an hour and a half just to order.” Indeed, they were literally so entranced by looking at each other, they didn’t want a waiter interrupting anything.
John and Mary are approaching their 21st and 20th birthdays this summer, and it’s fair to say that each has a prayerful wisdom that goes beyond their years. Prayer was an essential part of their lives before meeting each other and certainly remained so afterward.
“I had been praying a few months before I met Mary that I would meet a woman and become closer to Jesus,” John told CatholicMatch. “I met Mary and had the most wonderful Lent…and grew so much closer to God.”
