A United States Marine Corps First Lieutenant recently started a small Theology of the Body study group with his fellow Marines serving in Japan:

While on board the U.S.S. Essex, I offered TOB classes to my fellow Marines. We had the only Catholic priest in our ship convoy, a simple and holy Vietnamese priest named Fr. Dang. Thankfully, he knew TOB and was very supportive. We convened every night for about an hour and a half in the ship’s chapel and slowly went through the Introduction to Theology of the Body DVD series. We went very in-depth. I was the only Catholic in the group, but that did not matter because TOB is such a truly universal teaching. The Marines loved it. It speaks very deep to the heart of all men, but I think it reaches the heart of a Marine in a special way since they know sacrificial love.

Read more on the impact this class has had on the Marines involved in his group – one, in particular, who, prior to studying TOB, was considering a vasectomy.

These TOB study groups are a powerful and effective way of making the TOB known and loved among the lay faithful and no group is ever too small. Personally, I don’t know if I would have ever found out about it if it weren’t for a very small “TOB Women’s Group” the residence director of my hall put together when I was going to Ave Maria University a few years ago. It was nothing fancy, just a handful of us girls getting together weekly in the RA’s apartment on campus listening to a Christopher West talk on CD. One meeting was all it took for me to get hooked and now here I am, roughly 5 years later, still soaking up as much TOB information as I can and sharing it with whoever will listen (and even some who won’t).

Ascension Press has the best material for these kinds of study groups with DVD packages that leader/study guides to help the flow of discussion. If you can’t afford any of those, the regular talks on CD and DVD are helpful in and of themselves. That’s how I got started!

TOB Tuesdays