Finding Love at Mass in Your 60s: God's Surprising Yes
- Alex Mulet
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
From a tap on the shoulder to a life together, complete with twists and turns, Mary Anne and Jim found each other in the Heart of Christ.
Mary Anne felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Do you want to go to a concert tonight?”
It was a Saturday in June 2018. Jim, recently returned to the Church after 40 years away, noticed Mary Anne faithfully attending Mass at St. Thomas More Parish in Centennial. He decided this Saturday would be different — and so did the Holy Spirit.
Little did Jim know that Mary Anne had uttered a simple prayer just moments before.
“This Saturday, my prayer was, ‘You know, Lord, I don’t want anything special, but it would be really nice to have somebody to go to dinner with. Nothing major,’” she recalled.
But it would be an understatement to say their story starts here.
'God, she's yours': Surrendering to the Cross
Let’s rewind about 40 years from Mary Anne and Jim’s first date.
Though Jim was not attending Mass at the time, he experienced an encounter with God that planted the seeds of his return to the Church, even if it didn’t look that way in the moment.
When his infant daughter Leah was diagnosed with a hip condition requiring a cast around her hips and legs until she was fully developed, Jim offered a desperate prayer: “God, she’s yours.”
To the doctor’s surprise, the issue disappeared overnight. Moved by grace, Jim sought Baptism for Leah but ran into frustrating red tape as an Air Force serviceman with residence in Minnesota and stationed in Utah. The delays discouraged him, and he eventually stepped away from the Catholic Church altogether.
During the next few decades, Jim found himself aimlessly bouncing between jobs and non-Catholic churches. But God never stopped working in his life — or in Leah’s. This quiet work of the Holy Spirit culminated on one Sunday in 2018. Jim was now living in Colorado.
“I went for a walk at sunrise, and was pretty depressed the night before … I see this guy down a path with a cross on his shoulder — a full-sized cross on his shoulder,” Jim said.
The man was Arthur Blessitt — the Guinness World Record holder for the World’s Longest Pilgrimage. Their conversation so impacted Jim that he had to share it with Leah.
Her response stunned him: she, her husband and three children had become Catholic. Within minutes, she had found a local Catholic church for Jim and encouraged him to attend Mass.
That morning, Jim walked into a Catholic church for the first time in four decades. Waiting for him was his second encounter of the day with Christ crucified.
“There Jesus is with his arms stretched out, nailed to a Cross, and I just felt love beyond what you can imagine. I bawled like a little baby — you know, embarrassed myself,” Jim said.
The church was St. Thomas More in Centennial, where Jim would soon meet Mary Anne.
Mary Anne's Second Chance at Life
Meanwhile, Mary Anne was living an answered prayer.
In 2003, she was facing a future on dialysis, already having been on dialysis for five years. One day, on her way out of the unit, turning to God, she prayed without anger, resentment or expectation: “Lord, I don’t ever want to come back here.” She was honest with God — she wanted to be done with dialysis.
The very next day, Mary Anne was called to receive a kidney transplant.
“Every day is a new day: a challenge and a blessing. And I was given a second chance at life, which is incredible,” she said.
Mary Anne experienced God’s grace through the Christ-like love of an 11-year-old boy.
“I received a letter from his mother years later,” Mary Anne explained. “She shared that she knew immediately what to do about his organs. He would have given them away himself. He was a boy who wanted those in need to be happy.”
That self-gift resonated with Mary Anne, especially since she had just professed to live a similar surrender through the Secular Franciscan Order the year before.
“It’s just a spirituality that strikes my heart,” Mary Anne said. “You profess to live a life according to the Gospel in the manner of St. Francis, who walked every, every step with Jesus.”
A parishioner at St. Thomas More, Mary Anne found herself surrounded and supported by a strong parish community amid her trials and walk with Jesus. Through it all, she’s learned that God answers prayers, even if in surprising ways — whether her quiet plea to leave dialysis or to have someone to go to dinner with.
Both times, God gave her far more than she expected.
Following the Heart of Christ Together
In the seven years since that first date, Jim and Mary Anne slowly recognized what they both already suspected: this was the love they had been praying for.
Christmas 2023 brought an unexpected gift.
Knowing Jim had a knack for picking out beautiful jewelry, she offhandedly mentioned she wanted a ring with three stones.
“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, right? Because my knuckles are getting bigger! So, I just wanted something to fit my ring finger just 36 right,” Mary Anne said. “I opened the package from his jeweler. I thought, ‘Wow, Jim, this is too big! I just wanted three little stones.’”
Two questions followed.
“Well, will you wear it?”
“Will you wear it forever?"
Mary Anne’s answer was a resounding “Absolutely.”
They began marriage preparation soon after. With no need to discuss the typical topics of child rearing and Natural Family Planning, the couple homed in on the heart of the vocation: the call to love like Christ. For Mary Anne, that call meant embodying Jesus’ generous heart.
“I had a friend who talked with me about this a long time ago, and I have this picture that she drew of a heart with my hands,” she recalled. “Through the heart, your hands come out to the other person, right? Isn’t that ‘reaching out’ to the other love?”
Now happily married, Mary Anne still finds herself learning to love like Jesus.
“Being single for decades, I’m learning to think differently. It’s not all about me anymore. It doesn’t have to be the way I want it to be, even though it’s really hard,” Mary Anne said with a laugh. “It’s wonderful having someone else to serve, to be with, to pray with, to love.”
Advice from the Newlyweds
Amid the torrents of dating advice today, Mary Anne and Jim’s advice to anyone waiting on God’s timing is simple: live in the present.
“Just be open to the presence of God,” Mary Anne explained. “Trust in what every day brings to you and be open.”
“Don’t have that radar going all the time. If you would like to get married, just live in the present. Living in the present, understanding who you are in God’s love, is much more than going after what you want — what you think you want,” Jim added.
“What gives hope? I think God gives hope,” Jim continued. “Life is good. Life is a real blessing. We didn’t have to be here. And I think prayer has gotten me there more than anything.”
Whether returning to the Church after decades away, enduring suffering or awaiting an answer to a prayer, the invitation remains the same: follow Christ’s heart and meet him in the present.
“Ask for what you want and accept what you receive. Because somebody might come right next to you, tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Do you want to go to a concert?’” Mary Anne concluded.
