Ephesians 4:1-6

Paul writes from prison, and begins with a charge that fits a wedding day exactly: "walk worthily of the calling with which you were called." The Church speaks of marriage as a vocation — a calling from God, not merely a choice — and this reading frames the whole liturgy that way. Two people are not simply setting up a household; they are answering a call.

The virtues Paul lists are strikingly unglamorous: lowliness, humility, patience, "bearing with one another in love." No couple gets through a first year of marriage, let alone a fiftieth, without every one of them. Placing them at the heart of the wedding is a quiet act of realism — this is what the promise being made today will actually be kept with.

Then comes the drumbeat the reading is famous for: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Paul is describing the unity of the Church, and marriage is that unity in miniature — what the tradition calls the domestic church. The oneness of husband and wife is not something they manufacture; it rests on the deeper oneness of God, into which both were baptized.

Because the reading grounds unity in baptism rather than in ceremony or feeling, it is an especially strong choice when bride and groom come from different Christian traditions. What they already share — one Lord, one faith, one baptism — is precisely what the text proclaims.