Will guests be uncomfortable with the bodily focus?

The lectionary selection is brief and focused on the body as temple, language that sanctifies rather than provokes. A confident lector and a clear homily can land it warmly.

Does choosing this reading commit us to a particular pastoral position?

It signals an embrace of the Catholic vision of bodily integrity in marriage, but every Catholic marriage already presumes that vision. The reading simply names it directly.

Second Reading (New Testament)

1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20

"Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit"

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Scripture text (World English Bible)

“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. Now God raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power. Don’t you know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Themes

the body as temple
sexual integrity
glorifying God in the body
union with Christ
sacramental embodiment

Reflection

Of all the New Testament options, this brief passage from First Corinthians is perhaps the most frankly bodily. Paul addresses a Corinthian church wrestling with confused ideas about the body: some treating it as morally irrelevant, others as something to be despised. His response is to insist on the body's sacred dignity: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God."

For a Catholic wedding, this reading does something the more familiar passages do not: it names the bodily dimension of marriage directly. The vows you exchange today are vows of the whole person, including the body. Sacramental marriage involves bodily union; the marriage bed is not separate from the sacrament but part of it. Paul's language of the body as temple sanctifies that reality. What you are about to share is holy.

The reading also names something many couples in marriage prep have wrestled with: the difference between the Catholic vision of sexuality and the surrounding culture's. Paul is emphatic that bodily union is not casual, not separable from the whole self. To be "joined to the Lord" is to be one spirit with him; to be joined to one's spouse in marriage is to be one flesh with them. The two are analogous, and the dignity of the second is grounded in the first.

This is a reading for couples who want to bear witness (quietly, without lecturing) to the Catholic conviction that the body matters and that married love is meant to be both bodily and holy.

Best for

·Couples drawn to Theology of the Body and the bodily dignity it teaches
·Marriages that have been marked by intentional chastity in dating and engagement
·Couples whose witness to Catholic teaching on sexuality is part of their vocation
·Weddings where the homilist is comfortable preaching the bodily dimension of marriage

In the liturgy

Less commonly chosen than other Pauline options, partly because the bodily focus catches some couples and homilists off guard. With a good homilist, it can be one of the most distinctive readings.

Pairs well with

Frequently asked questions

Will guests be uncomfortable with the bodily focus?: The lectionary selection is brief and focused on the body as temple, language that sanctifies rather than provokes. A confident lector and a clear homily can land it warmly.
Does choosing this reading commit us to a particular pastoral position?: It signals an embrace of the Catholic vision of bodily integrity in marriage, but every Catholic marriage already presumes that vision. The reading simply names it directly.

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