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God’s Plan For Your Marriage: An Exploration of Holy Matrimony from Genesis to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb
This life is preparation for eternity, and from the beginning, God created marriage to help married couples become saints. Indeed, God has given to married couples the profound gift of being able to fulfill the purpose of their creation through, with, and in each other. Marriage is a foreshadowing of Heaven, and each married couple must work with God if their marriage is to be a foretaste of eternity.
In this thought-provoking and uplifting book, Fr. Robert Altier unpacks the theological significance of the Sacrament of Marriage and brilliantly explains how it has been a part of God’s plan from the beginning — and will eventually be fulfilled at the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb in Heaven. Teeming with practical wisdom and clear examples, these pages delve into the surpassing dignity of marriage as a covenant and a sacrament — and a call to holiness.
You will learn how the graces and virtues that are conferred in the Sacrament of Marriage transform the unity of the couple — not just in the flesh but in the heart and soul. You’ll learn how to predispose yourself to receive this divine power and, best of all, how to love your spouse more deeply. You will also explore the significance of marriage vows and how men are called to be the spiritual leaders and women are called to be the heart of their families.
Fr. Altier tackles contemporary questions and concerns, such as the real meaning of “being subject to one another in marriage” and those sensitive and controversial issues regarding sexual morality. Arguably one of the most theologically eye-opening books on marriage ever written, this book also
The definitive reasons why marriage can exist only between a man and a woman How the married couple embodies the life-giving love of the Most Blessed Trinity Why the Sacrament of Marriage makes the couple a new creation The characteristics of true love and how to love with heroic charity How to avoid settling for mediocrity in love and service to others The vital connection between Baptism, Marriage, and the Holy Eucharist Why you must become vulnerable in love in order to become receptive to love How marriage leads to overcoming sinful tendencies and makes saints The necessity of prayer in marriage for the individual, the couple, and the family How a deeper theological understanding of the Holy Eucharist and Marriage deepens marital intimacy Why “the two becoming one” in marriage is foremost a spiritual union
In this thought-provoking and uplifting book, Fr. Robert Altier unpacks the theological significance of the Sacrament of Marriage and brilliantly explains how it has been a part of God’s plan from the beginning — and will eventually be fulfilled at the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb in Heaven. Teeming with practical wisdom and clear examples, these pages delve into the surpassing dignity of marriage as a covenant and a sacrament — and a call to holiness.
You will learn how the graces and virtues that are conferred in the Sacrament of Marriage transform the unity of the couple — not just in the flesh but in the heart and soul. You’ll learn how to predispose yourself to receive this divine power and, best of all, how to love your spouse more deeply. You will also explore the significance of marriage vows and how men are called to be the spiritual leaders and women are called to be the heart of their families.
Fr. Altier tackles contemporary questions and concerns, such as the real meaning of “being subject to one another in marriage” and those sensitive and controversial issues regarding sexual morality. Arguably one of the most theologically eye-opening books on marriage ever written, this book also
The definitive reasons why marriage can exist only between a man and a woman How the married couple embodies the life-giving love of the Most Blessed Trinity Why the Sacrament of Marriage makes the couple a new creation The characteristics of true love and how to love with heroic charity How to avoid settling for mediocrity in love and service to others The vital connection between Baptism, Marriage, and the Holy Eucharist Why you must become vulnerable in love in order to become receptive to love How marriage leads to overcoming sinful tendencies and makes saints The necessity of prayer in marriage for the individual, the couple, and the family How a deeper theological understanding of the Holy Eucharist and Marriage deepens marital intimacy Why “the two becoming one” in marriage is foremost a spiritual union
189 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 27, 2022
32 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
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April 21, 2025
Was very good for me. I learned a lot about the sacrament of holy matrimony.
Wasn’t an easy read though, but I’m much richer having read it.
In creation, among the animate creatures, God began with the lesser and moved toward the greater.
Reject the lies and accept the truth.
The original disposition of man and woman were without shame because their love for one another was not tainted in any way by anything selfish.
In God's material creation, as presented in the 1st chapter of Genesis, there is a growth in perfection. Each creature God made became more and more perfect. Who was the last being created? The woman. If she was the last being God made, then it follows that she must also be the most perfect or the highest of all material creatures in creation.
Lies and sins enslave us; The truth will set us free.
Dying to oneself is what love is all about.
If it were simply the choice between heaven and hell, it would be easy, but the choice must be made daily.
Because we are made for love, the more we love God, the more we will be fulfilled.
We can find fulfilment only in being who we were created to be. Love means doing always what is best for the other. In the most fundamental sense of this vow, doing what is best means helping each other to grow in holiness and to become saints.
You are accountable for how you live your vows.
“Where there is no love, put love, and there will be love.” - Saint John of the Cross
Ask for the grace promised you on the day of your marriage to help you in the present circumstances. Grace doesn't make it easy. Grace makes it possible.
One thing that is universal in the lives of the saints is that the saints are never satisfied that they are loving enough. They always strive to love more.
When one spouse is able to treat the other the same way on a bad day as on a good day, you know the love is real indeed.
Every sin is an act of selfishness, and selfishness is the opposite of love. With every act of selfishness, we inhibit our capacity to love; with every act of charity, we expand our capacity to love.
This is the entire goal of the Christian life: to rid ourselves of selfishness and to be filled with love for God and neighbor.
The real proof of humility is patience.
Humility and charity are connected in an absolute and unbreakable manner. The height of our charity will be equal to the depth of our humility.
Married couples grow in holiness by obedience to the duties of their state in life.
The greatest privilege we can have in this life is union with God and with one another.
Love is a virtue, and like any other virtue it grows only when it is tested.
Each time we love, we open our hearts to a greater capacity to receive more love and to love more. This cycle is intended to continue for our whole life. As long as we are alive, we have the ability to grow in love.
Suffering, if accepted and cooperated with, purifies our hearts of any selfishness or attachments. It stretches or dilates our hearts, making them capable of receiving more love.
Before we can die the death of a martyr, we must live the life of a martyr.
The love of a married couple must overflow the boundaries of their relationship. God, in his love for us, has called married couples to participate in his work of creation. Nothing greater on the natural level can be granted to a person than to be given the gift of children.
A child is a living tangible sign of the love of God and of the love of his or her parents. When parents look at their child, they should see a living form of the love they have for each other.
Things can be done either begrudgingly, out of a sense of duty, or they can be done out of love.
God is asking you to practice heroic charity toward your spouse.
Love Jesus in and through your spouse in ordinary ways with extraordinary love, with agape love.
Imagine the Holy Family living together in Nazareth. What do you think their prayer routine was like? How can your family imitate theirs?
It's impossible for a person in a state of mortal sin to think clearly.
It is difficult to pray for someone you are angry with, but praying for that person will help to cut through the anger and bring peace and reconciliation to the relationship.
Sacramental marriage exists when two baptized persons are united in marriage by God.
Natural law is written into the heart of every person.
The marriage covenant was not only holy, it was an act of worship.
Unless there is objective evidence to support a claim that a marriage was not valid, the marriage must be assumed to be valid.
A sacrament is valid because it was done correctly.
The bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament of holy matrimony to each other.
In each of the sacraments, there is an increase in sanctifying grace, which is God's life in us.
Sacramental graces that come with holy matrimony are many because God offers spouses the graces necessary for everything that will occur in the course of their married life. These graces include the grace to live with each other, to bear each others’ faults, to help each other to grow in sanctity, to be good parents, to help with the difficulties that will inevitably rise, to fulfill the duties of Christian spouses and parents, and to live alone with each other after the children have been raised.
Holy matrimony reflects the marital relationship between Jesus and his church.
In a Sacramental marriage, the conjugal embrace is the physical expression of the spiritual union that takes place at the moment of marriage. It is this spiritual union of the two persons that is expressed in the physical union of the two.
There is a real and true union of persons, of souls, that occurs when the couple professes their vows in a Sacramental marriage. At that moment, God, who created the couple to be two separate persons, now creates them to be one.
Marriage ends at death because something even greater- a union even more intimate- is awaiting them in heaven.
If you love your spouse in the Lord, you are loving the Lord in your spouse.
In being subject, a woman will find her dignity.
The desire for one's husband is when the woman tries to exercise headship in the relationship. The cost is that in order to be the head, the woman has to relinquish being the heart of the relationship.
For the woman to have her desire to be lord over her husband is contrary to the receptive nature of a woman. A woman is being receptive when she allows herself to be loved.
There is immense dignity in the sacrament of marriage.
The highest good is the service husbands and wives need to provide each other.
In marriage there is complete and total giving and receiving of persons. This is expressed most completely in the marital embrace.
If we act according to truth and love, we choose life. If we act in opposition to our dignity, we choose death.
The more we are conformed to the truth, the more we will love; The more we love, the more we will share in the life of God. The more we share in the life of God, the more we will become like him. The more we become like God, the more we will be conformed to truth and the more we will love.
When God looks at us, he should see his love mirrored back to him in a human form. When parents look at their children, they should see the love they have for each other being mirrored back to them. The face of a child is the living expression of the love of the married couple.
Saint Augustine said “the cross is the marriage bad upon which Jesus consummated his marriage to his bride, the church.”
Emulate the love that caused are Lord to pour himself out for us in his crucifixion.
A Sacramental marriage is not just the union of the couple but a union of the couple with God.
The union of the bodies the married couple is the physical expression of the spiritual union of their souls. The union of the souls is holy, therefore the union of their bodies must also be holy.
The deeper their spiritual union, the deeper will be the intimacy of their physical union. Each spouse must be seeking only the good of the other in the act of intimacy.
A couple can look at their intimate life and see the reflection of their entire relationship. If their intimacy is truly loving, they will see the selfless love reflected in the entirety of their relationship.
The physical aspect of the marriage in most situations will reflect what is happening in the rest of the marriage.
The act of intercourse should be a physical re-pronunciation of the marriage vows, that is, a total and complete giving of yourself to your spouse as a gift and the total and complete receiving of your spouse’s gift of self to you.
The ring on the finger is a sign for everyone else that a person is married, but the actual sign of the Sacramental marriage is shared only between the two spouses.
The sexual union of a couple is the highest expression of their marriage, and no one can engage in this act of intimacy unless they are married.
Contraception would immediately automatically turn the sexual relationship into something selfish.
Humanae Vitae not only presents church teaching; It has proven to be truly prophetic.
With the invention of each new form of contraception, the divorce rate jumped.
Spouses who use contraception are using each other because they are rejecting some aspect of the other person's gift of self.
The sexual faculties are given by God to be given to another person in marriage.This means the sexual faculties are for another person’s pleasure, not one's own selfish pleasure. Masturbation violates one's own dignity.
From the beginning, married life and love were to reflect the holiness in life of the most Holy Trinity.
Mental prayer brings us into union with the will of God this is the prayer that changes our lives and helps us grow in virtue.
It requires one to forgive, but it requires two to reconcile.
If anything is held back, the sacrifice is neither true nor loving and is therefore not a sacrifice acceptable to God.
In Mother Teresa’s chapels, there was a plaque that said: “Priest of God: say this mass as if it were your first mass, your last mass, your only mass.”
United with Jesus in the reception of Holy Communion we are given the grace we need to assume the other duties of our lives.
With a mother's heart, she is the vessel of grace for her husband and children. This mirrors God's order of salvation, in which Mary is the mediatrix of all graces.
It may seem foreign to think of this act of union as a sacrifice. But recall the meaning of the word sacrifice is to make holy.
Baptism, the Eucharist, and holy matrimony are all covenants.
We need to be sure that when we receive into ourselves the bridegroom of our souls, we have the same disposition in receiving him as he has in giving himself to us.
The intimate aspect of marriage is a microcosm of the whole marriage.
Love grows the most when it scems the most difficult to love. True happiness comes only when the union has been purified in the Crucible of suffering and proven in adversity.
Praying for each other and praying to love each other more not only helps the other person by obtaining grace with them, it also helps the one praying to keep the disposition of an open heart toward the other.
There can be no absolute division in a marriage. After all, the two are really one.
In order for a couple to enter into the sacrament of holy matrimony, they each offer themselves as a complete and total sacrifice to the other. This must be total self giving, holding nothing back.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Nothing is lacking where everything is given.”
When the angels fell it was in part because God's plan did not make sense to them and they would not accept what they could not understand. (God, help me.)
When we look at the Eucharist from the perspective of love, then it makes perfect sense. Our Lord is the bridegroom of our souls, so he wants to have a way to express his union with us.
Faith is letting Christ lead us by the hand when we can't see.
Love finds its expression in our physical intimacy.
Holy matrimony and the Holy Eucharist both foreshadow and prefigure heaven. If heaven will be both mass and marriage, then the prefiguration of this is found both in the mass and in matrimony.
Marriage prefigures and prepares married persons for heaven.
The greater love you have for our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament the greater will be your ability to love your spouse.
Recall the sin of Adam and Eve and its punishment: life would come into the world through women in pain, and life would be sustained by men in pain.
Each person can bring his or her struggles and sufferings to the mass and place them on the paten with the bread and pour them in the chalice with the wine. Then, at the consecration, each person's suffering is united to the sacrifice of Christ and becomes his suffering.
Each person who worthily receives Holy Communion is united with our Lord in his glory.
The more generous we are in offering ourselves, the more we will be able to receive from the generosity of our Lord, who receives our gift and reciprocates by giving us the gift of himself.
We have to see marriage in its proper and eternal context. It is the way of becoming saints and raising new saints for God.
Holy matrimony prefigures and foreshadow heaven but at the same time it already participates and makes present the life of heaven on earth.
Everything they reflected and participated in during their married life on earth will find its perfection in heaven.
Wasn’t an easy read though, but I’m much richer having read it.
In creation, among the animate creatures, God began with the lesser and moved toward the greater.
Reject the lies and accept the truth.
The original disposition of man and woman were without shame because their love for one another was not tainted in any way by anything selfish.
In God's material creation, as presented in the 1st chapter of Genesis, there is a growth in perfection. Each creature God made became more and more perfect. Who was the last being created? The woman. If she was the last being God made, then it follows that she must also be the most perfect or the highest of all material creatures in creation.
Lies and sins enslave us; The truth will set us free.
Dying to oneself is what love is all about.
If it were simply the choice between heaven and hell, it would be easy, but the choice must be made daily.
Because we are made for love, the more we love God, the more we will be fulfilled.
We can find fulfilment only in being who we were created to be. Love means doing always what is best for the other. In the most fundamental sense of this vow, doing what is best means helping each other to grow in holiness and to become saints.
You are accountable for how you live your vows.
“Where there is no love, put love, and there will be love.” - Saint John of the Cross
Ask for the grace promised you on the day of your marriage to help you in the present circumstances. Grace doesn't make it easy. Grace makes it possible.
One thing that is universal in the lives of the saints is that the saints are never satisfied that they are loving enough. They always strive to love more.
When one spouse is able to treat the other the same way on a bad day as on a good day, you know the love is real indeed.
Every sin is an act of selfishness, and selfishness is the opposite of love. With every act of selfishness, we inhibit our capacity to love; with every act of charity, we expand our capacity to love.
This is the entire goal of the Christian life: to rid ourselves of selfishness and to be filled with love for God and neighbor.
The real proof of humility is patience.
Humility and charity are connected in an absolute and unbreakable manner. The height of our charity will be equal to the depth of our humility.
Married couples grow in holiness by obedience to the duties of their state in life.
The greatest privilege we can have in this life is union with God and with one another.
Love is a virtue, and like any other virtue it grows only when it is tested.
Each time we love, we open our hearts to a greater capacity to receive more love and to love more. This cycle is intended to continue for our whole life. As long as we are alive, we have the ability to grow in love.
Suffering, if accepted and cooperated with, purifies our hearts of any selfishness or attachments. It stretches or dilates our hearts, making them capable of receiving more love.
Before we can die the death of a martyr, we must live the life of a martyr.
The love of a married couple must overflow the boundaries of their relationship. God, in his love for us, has called married couples to participate in his work of creation. Nothing greater on the natural level can be granted to a person than to be given the gift of children.
A child is a living tangible sign of the love of God and of the love of his or her parents. When parents look at their child, they should see a living form of the love they have for each other.
Things can be done either begrudgingly, out of a sense of duty, or they can be done out of love.
God is asking you to practice heroic charity toward your spouse.
Love Jesus in and through your spouse in ordinary ways with extraordinary love, with agape love.
Imagine the Holy Family living together in Nazareth. What do you think their prayer routine was like? How can your family imitate theirs?
It's impossible for a person in a state of mortal sin to think clearly.
It is difficult to pray for someone you are angry with, but praying for that person will help to cut through the anger and bring peace and reconciliation to the relationship.
Sacramental marriage exists when two baptized persons are united in marriage by God.
Natural law is written into the heart of every person.
The marriage covenant was not only holy, it was an act of worship.
Unless there is objective evidence to support a claim that a marriage was not valid, the marriage must be assumed to be valid.
A sacrament is valid because it was done correctly.
The bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament of holy matrimony to each other.
In each of the sacraments, there is an increase in sanctifying grace, which is God's life in us.
Sacramental graces that come with holy matrimony are many because God offers spouses the graces necessary for everything that will occur in the course of their married life. These graces include the grace to live with each other, to bear each others’ faults, to help each other to grow in sanctity, to be good parents, to help with the difficulties that will inevitably rise, to fulfill the duties of Christian spouses and parents, and to live alone with each other after the children have been raised.
Holy matrimony reflects the marital relationship between Jesus and his church.
In a Sacramental marriage, the conjugal embrace is the physical expression of the spiritual union that takes place at the moment of marriage. It is this spiritual union of the two persons that is expressed in the physical union of the two.
There is a real and true union of persons, of souls, that occurs when the couple professes their vows in a Sacramental marriage. At that moment, God, who created the couple to be two separate persons, now creates them to be one.
Marriage ends at death because something even greater- a union even more intimate- is awaiting them in heaven.
If you love your spouse in the Lord, you are loving the Lord in your spouse.
In being subject, a woman will find her dignity.
The desire for one's husband is when the woman tries to exercise headship in the relationship. The cost is that in order to be the head, the woman has to relinquish being the heart of the relationship.
For the woman to have her desire to be lord over her husband is contrary to the receptive nature of a woman. A woman is being receptive when she allows herself to be loved.
There is immense dignity in the sacrament of marriage.
The highest good is the service husbands and wives need to provide each other.
In marriage there is complete and total giving and receiving of persons. This is expressed most completely in the marital embrace.
If we act according to truth and love, we choose life. If we act in opposition to our dignity, we choose death.
The more we are conformed to the truth, the more we will love; The more we love, the more we will share in the life of God. The more we share in the life of God, the more we will become like him. The more we become like God, the more we will be conformed to truth and the more we will love.
When God looks at us, he should see his love mirrored back to him in a human form. When parents look at their children, they should see the love they have for each other being mirrored back to them. The face of a child is the living expression of the love of the married couple.
Saint Augustine said “the cross is the marriage bad upon which Jesus consummated his marriage to his bride, the church.”
Emulate the love that caused are Lord to pour himself out for us in his crucifixion.
A Sacramental marriage is not just the union of the couple but a union of the couple with God.
The union of the bodies the married couple is the physical expression of the spiritual union of their souls. The union of the souls is holy, therefore the union of their bodies must also be holy.
The deeper their spiritual union, the deeper will be the intimacy of their physical union. Each spouse must be seeking only the good of the other in the act of intimacy.
A couple can look at their intimate life and see the reflection of their entire relationship. If their intimacy is truly loving, they will see the selfless love reflected in the entirety of their relationship.
The physical aspect of the marriage in most situations will reflect what is happening in the rest of the marriage.
The act of intercourse should be a physical re-pronunciation of the marriage vows, that is, a total and complete giving of yourself to your spouse as a gift and the total and complete receiving of your spouse’s gift of self to you.
The ring on the finger is a sign for everyone else that a person is married, but the actual sign of the Sacramental marriage is shared only between the two spouses.
The sexual union of a couple is the highest expression of their marriage, and no one can engage in this act of intimacy unless they are married.
Contraception would immediately automatically turn the sexual relationship into something selfish.
Humanae Vitae not only presents church teaching; It has proven to be truly prophetic.
With the invention of each new form of contraception, the divorce rate jumped.
Spouses who use contraception are using each other because they are rejecting some aspect of the other person's gift of self.
The sexual faculties are given by God to be given to another person in marriage.This means the sexual faculties are for another person’s pleasure, not one's own selfish pleasure. Masturbation violates one's own dignity.
From the beginning, married life and love were to reflect the holiness in life of the most Holy Trinity.
Mental prayer brings us into union with the will of God this is the prayer that changes our lives and helps us grow in virtue.
It requires one to forgive, but it requires two to reconcile.
If anything is held back, the sacrifice is neither true nor loving and is therefore not a sacrifice acceptable to God.
In Mother Teresa’s chapels, there was a plaque that said: “Priest of God: say this mass as if it were your first mass, your last mass, your only mass.”
United with Jesus in the reception of Holy Communion we are given the grace we need to assume the other duties of our lives.
With a mother's heart, she is the vessel of grace for her husband and children. This mirrors God's order of salvation, in which Mary is the mediatrix of all graces.
It may seem foreign to think of this act of union as a sacrifice. But recall the meaning of the word sacrifice is to make holy.
Baptism, the Eucharist, and holy matrimony are all covenants.
We need to be sure that when we receive into ourselves the bridegroom of our souls, we have the same disposition in receiving him as he has in giving himself to us.
The intimate aspect of marriage is a microcosm of the whole marriage.
Love grows the most when it scems the most difficult to love. True happiness comes only when the union has been purified in the Crucible of suffering and proven in adversity.
Praying for each other and praying to love each other more not only helps the other person by obtaining grace with them, it also helps the one praying to keep the disposition of an open heart toward the other.
There can be no absolute division in a marriage. After all, the two are really one.
In order for a couple to enter into the sacrament of holy matrimony, they each offer themselves as a complete and total sacrifice to the other. This must be total self giving, holding nothing back.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Nothing is lacking where everything is given.”
When the angels fell it was in part because God's plan did not make sense to them and they would not accept what they could not understand. (God, help me.)
When we look at the Eucharist from the perspective of love, then it makes perfect sense. Our Lord is the bridegroom of our souls, so he wants to have a way to express his union with us.
Faith is letting Christ lead us by the hand when we can't see.
Love finds its expression in our physical intimacy.
Holy matrimony and the Holy Eucharist both foreshadow and prefigure heaven. If heaven will be both mass and marriage, then the prefiguration of this is found both in the mass and in matrimony.
Marriage prefigures and prepares married persons for heaven.
The greater love you have for our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament the greater will be your ability to love your spouse.
Recall the sin of Adam and Eve and its punishment: life would come into the world through women in pain, and life would be sustained by men in pain.
Each person can bring his or her struggles and sufferings to the mass and place them on the paten with the bread and pour them in the chalice with the wine. Then, at the consecration, each person's suffering is united to the sacrifice of Christ and becomes his suffering.
Each person who worthily receives Holy Communion is united with our Lord in his glory.
The more generous we are in offering ourselves, the more we will be able to receive from the generosity of our Lord, who receives our gift and reciprocates by giving us the gift of himself.
We have to see marriage in its proper and eternal context. It is the way of becoming saints and raising new saints for God.
Holy matrimony prefigures and foreshadow heaven but at the same time it already participates and makes present the life of heaven on earth.
Everything they reflected and participated in during their married life on earth will find its perfection in heaven.
January 24, 2025
This was a useful spiritual and theological exploration of the sacrament of marriage, with a lot of practical wisdom that is grounded in Catholic sacramental and moral theology, as well as very through Biblical analysis. There is a strong emphasis here on the radical nature of self-gift, and really invites a paradigm shift for couples who would have previously thought of marriage as a 50-50 endeavor or who might have kept a ledger of what they put into and got out of the marriage; this book presents a higher vision of a 100-100 marriage with a continual outpouring for the other. A lot of passages in here were inspirational and interesting.
I read this at the recommendation of my clinical supervisor in a Catholic therapy practice. I reference this book frequently when performing couples therapy for Catholics.
My main critique is on the way the book is structured and organized. When I ask clients to read the book, few are able to get into it - the way it is written requires some degree of investment, which the people who need to hear the book's message may not be prepared or able to give. And for those who are invested in it, much of the book focuses on the basics - not a bad thing, it just feels a bit mismatched. I would have preferred a book with similar content but as an easier read, or a book with a similar difficulty but more advanced content. Still definitely worth reading though for any married couple.
I read this at the recommendation of my clinical supervisor in a Catholic therapy practice. I reference this book frequently when performing couples therapy for Catholics.
My main critique is on the way the book is structured and organized. When I ask clients to read the book, few are able to get into it - the way it is written requires some degree of investment, which the people who need to hear the book's message may not be prepared or able to give. And for those who are invested in it, much of the book focuses on the basics - not a bad thing, it just feels a bit mismatched. I would have preferred a book with similar content but as an easier read, or a book with a similar difficulty but more advanced content. Still definitely worth reading though for any married couple.
April 29, 2023
This is a good book that examines Catholic beliefs about marriage and beyond. For example, marriage is a bond between husband,wife and God, views on birth control, adultery, confession, importance of prayer, pornography seen a mortal sin etc. Marriage is both a sacrifice and a blessing. Each spouse should sacrifice for the other. Jesus sacrificed for us on the cross. Married couples are to love each other as Christ loved the church. Pray for marriage. Marriage was created by God and is an image of God. There is a lot of wisdom in this book regardless of denomination.
July 4, 2023
Thoroughly informative and deeply moving, "God's Plan for Your Marriage" does a wonderful job of presenting God's design for marriage from the beginning of time. This book helped me appreciate my own marriage more, and view the sacrament in a new light. It also made me want to love both God and my husband to the very best of my ability, in order to be perfected in authentic love in preparation for eternal life.
I would highly recommend this book for those considering marriage as a vocation, as well as for engaged and married couples.
I would highly recommend this book for those considering marriage as a vocation, as well as for engaged and married couples.
January 11, 2026
This book was given to me by my mum. I gained a deeper understanding of marriage and the Catholic faith. Since the Catholic faith is so rich and complex, I find myself continuing to piece together aspects of the faith throughout my life and seem to make sense of certain parts of the faith when I need it most. Father Altier comprehensively explains holy matrimony as created by God.
There’s much I could do to improve as a wife and Catholic.
There’s much I could do to improve as a wife and Catholic.
September 25, 2025
I wanted to give this 5 stars, and had it ended with Ch. 5, I would have. Chapter 6 had an analogy that just didn't resonate with me, and 7 seemed to be making its own point and summarizing at the same time.
Overall though, a beautiful book on marriage.
Overall though, a beautiful book on marriage.
September 30, 2025
Amazing
This book has amazed me in its ability to tell with clarity how we should treat each other in marriage through the theology and church teachings. It truly shows what love looks like in a marriage through Christ's example and the teachings of the church.
This book has amazed me in its ability to tell with clarity how we should treat each other in marriage through the theology and church teachings. It truly shows what love looks like in a marriage through Christ's example and the teachings of the church.
April 17, 2023
Incredibly beautiful book on the Sacrament of Marriage. Inspired insights. Deeply profound. A MUST read for every Catholic married couple. Full review coming soon.
June 1, 2023
I wish I had read this before I got married. It would have saved me a lot of turmoil, particularly in the Newlywed years! A must read for all Catholics considering marriage.
Want to read
August 7, 2024Catholic family life rec
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