The journey of Mike and Shelly Calabrisi
Mike Calabrisi said he wanted to visit all 50 states before he was 50. A career in the Army and a 10,000-mile motorcycle trip for his honeymoon helped him reach that goal.
He and his wife, Shelly, would say marriage is an even better state, one they entered in Sept. 19, 2020, at Sacred Heart, Danville, two years to the day after they first met.
“Shelly’s now living out her newly found faith,” Mike said, “while I’m living out my newly renewed faith.”
Sitting in the breakfast nook of their home in Pittsylvania County, the couple reflected on the path to their marriage and Shelly’s conversion.
God at work
A cradle Catholic, Mike, 50, said he practiced his faith during his years growing up in Binghamton, New York, in Danville and throughout his Army career. But one Sunday morning, he was ushering at church when a relative came by to tell him that his mother had just died. He stopped going to Mass.
“I tried to go back a few times. It just didn’t feel as good,” he said. “That feeling was gone. I tried to get it back…but it was hard.”
Raised on a farm in Oklahoma, Shelly, 46, belonged to an evangelical Christian church. She earned a master’s degree and taught physics and astronomy at a high school for science and the arts in Louisiana for 10 years. This was followed by work for the federal government that included a year of research and study at the South Pole.
Her first marriage, to a Catholic, ended in divorce after 18 years and was later annulled. She said she’d been agnostic since college, but she and her husband did go to church often.
“It wasn’t a bad experience,” she said. “More often than not, I reminded him to go to church, to go to Mass and holy days of obligation, and his family was very devout. But it just never felt right.”
The father of two daughters, Mike was married for 27 years before losing his wife to ALS. A friend pushed him to try online dating, where he met Shelly.
“I believe God brought her into my life,” he said.
Once again, Shelly was in a relationship with a Catholic who wanted her to come to church with him, and she would.
One Easter after they met, that feeling of peace and joy that Mike had lost returned.
“Maybe I needed that person that showed interest that could bring that life back into me, and she did,” he said.
‘Rooted in reality’
After losing her job in Norman, Oklahoma, in April 2020, Shelly moved to Danville, where Mike was living. They eventually started Pre-Cana sessions with Father Jonathan Goertz. He recalled that Mike and Shelly put their hearts into the program, eager to pursue a theme or a topic in depth, to challenge each other.
“Some couples come in with romance and idealism about marriage,” he said. “I saw them rooted in reality and understanding the importance in growing closer together and seeking God’s help, never taking their relationship for granted.”
Even before marriage preparation, Shelly said she had been thinking that “I really need to take the time to figure out: Do I believe in God? Do I believe in Jesus? Or not.”
She did.
“We finished Pre-Cana, got married, and I felt I was ready,” she said. “It felt right, it finally felt right. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with. It was perfect, absolutely perfect.”
Her scientific training came into play, too, prompting her to question some of the things she was asked to believe, and realizing that reason complements faith.
“I really felt and understood that it required me to take the first step,” she said of entering the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) in order to prepare for baptism, confirmation and reception of the Eucharist at the April 3, 2021, Easter Vigil. “God requires me to do the seeking. And once I started to actually seek, then I understood. Do I still have doubts? Yes. I think that’s healthy and natural and normal. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But as long as I continue to seek and look for answers, then God will provide them, help me understand and ease my doubts.”
‘Seek God’
Shelly took a rigorous approach to choosing a patron saint name, reading about all the female saints in the Church.
“There are a lot of women who are sainted who dedicated themselves to God and were martyred at 13 as virgins,” she said. “Can’t relate to that. Sorry!”
In the end, she chose St. Mary Magdalen, but also found inspiration in the life of St. Zita, a poor woman who became a housekeeper to a rich family in 13th century Italy. She is the patron saint of domestic workers.
“What I admire about her is her humility,” Shelly said. “You do your job well, no matter what that job is; you’re dedicated to it, and you don’t waver in that. And you realize that’s part of God’s plan. This is your job, and yes, it may, in the grand scheme of things, not be important in the eyes of the world, but it’s important to God and how you perform it is important to God.”
Her sponsor was a former colleague, Ben Lasseter, who on occasion had urged Shelly to consider converting to Catholicism.
“Shelly was filled with this great love for everyone, and a great exuberance for life,” he said in an email interview. “I thought that her agnosticism was not any kind of militant atheism. It seemed to me that she was already more than halfway along the trip toward being Catholic.”
Life brings episodes of joy, moments of glory and pain, he said. “I knew that Shelly — like everybody else — would endure all three kinds of episodes, and I was glad she would be able to do so consciously, knowing that she was giving it all to Christ.”
“You as an individual have to seek out God,” Shelly said. “You’ve got to take that first step and knock on the door, and then he’ll open it.”