Ceremony readings

With three weeks to go (wait, what??), it's a little embarrassing to say that we just picked out ceremony readings last week.  For those of you who don't know, the Catholic mass contains three readings: the first reading, which is from the old testament; the second reading, which is from the new testament; and the gospel, which is from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  The church provides guidance on choosing your readings; namely, there are wedding mass planning books (like Together for Life) with all of the suggested readings, and you basically go through and pick the ones you want.

For the first reading, we already knew that we wanted to use Ecclesiastes 4:8-12:

Two are better than one: they get a good wage for their labor.  If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion.  Woe to the solitary man!  For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up.  So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm.  How can one alone keep warm?  Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist.  A three-ply cord is not easily broken.

For the second reading, we had to do some digging.  This is the slot in which people often use 1st Corinthians (love is patient, love is kind), and we really wanted to avoid that cliche (although it is a beautiful reading).  It's no wonder people always choose that one, though, given the paucity of options!  We ultimately settled on Philippians 2:1-4:

If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.  Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out for not his own interests, but everyone for those of others.

We liked the idea of putting the other first, so it seemed appropriate.  Finally, we got to the gospel readings, and the options were just terrible.  This is the place where people often use Mark 10:6-9 (what God has joined together, let no man put asunder).  We narrowed it down to Matthew 5 (the Beatitudes) and John 15 (remain in my love), but neither one of those was really inspiring.  The Beatitudes are great, but they're about suffering and don't really seem appropriate for a wedding, and John 15 has a weird line about slavery in the middle.  So, we asked Father Mike if we could use the reading from mass last week, Matthew 25, instead.  We thought we'd trade minor references to hellfire for a reading that's actually about love (caring for the least of these).  We're waiting to hear from Father Mike for approval, but then we've got the entire ceremony finished!