What is this book about? I’m glad you asked! From the back cover:

God intends nothing less than sainthood for you!

The early Church held that all believers could achieve holiness. Over time this conviction was largely forgotten. Sainthood seemed to be an honor only intended for a select few among the priests and religious.

Eric Sammons tells how twentieth century Spanish priest—and canonized saint—Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, recovered the message of the universal call to holiness.

Declared “the saint of ordinary life” by Pope John Paul II, St. Josemaría developed a spirituality directed toward the sanctity of every man and woman. His legacy is the belief that each of us can, by God’s grace, achieve holiness through the course of our ordinary life and work.

The heart of Sammons’ practical guide to the spiritual life is a detailed examination of the steps in St. Josemaría’s thoughtful plan for building a saintly life in spite of your hectic work and home life – in a world filled with distractions and temptations.

Strive for your own personal holiness as you implement your daily plan to:

• Be a Contemplative in the Midst of a Busy World
• Live a Life of Prayer
• Recognize the Presence of God
• Make a Plan of Life
• Make Your Work a Way to Heaven

Holiness for Everyone! will inspire you as it sets your feet on the path to sainthood.

“Eric Sammons shows that St. Josemaría has recovered the most powerful truth of classic Christianity and restated it in a way that is compelling for men and women of our time.”
From the Foreword by Scott Hahn

Pre-order your copy now!

As Christmas approaches, there is one thing we can be as sure of seeing as Santa Claus and incessant ads for holiday deals: full Catholic churches. As predictable as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, Catholics of all stripes return to their parish every Christmas, many visiting for the first time since the previous Easter. The Catholics in attendance at a typical Christmas Mass run the gamut from daily Mass communicants to irregularly attending families to those who are estranged from the Church but come out of familial obligation.

As practicing Catholics, what can we and our parishes do to reach out to those who are estranged from or perhaps just uninterested in the Catholic Church? While this question has many possible answers, it will be helpful to review some basic principles that should form the foundation of any outreach to lapsed Catholics.

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Also, be sure to read the sidebar for the article titled “The Mercy of God” – it is a great story of God’s great love for us!

If the secular world had a way to canonize someone, then surely the recent death of Apple founder Steve Jobs would have caused a hasty completion of that process. Jobs was one of the most revered businessmen of our time, and the ubiquity of Apple’s “i”-products — the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad — made him a cultural phenomenon, too. After his death, there was such an outpouring of grief and adulation from all corners of the world that one could not help but recall the worldwide reaction to Pope John Paul II’s death six years ago.

In many ways, the cultural status Jobs attained was unrivaled. Even Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and his only true rival, does not stir up the passion and cult following that Jobs did. People joke about the “cult of Mac,” but in all seriousness the strong devotion that many people have to Apple’s products and even to Jobs personally is striking.

And, for better or worse, Jobs did change the world. Think about life just a dozen years ago: no iPods, touchscreen smartphones or tablet computers. In just a short time, Jobs was able to push his company to create multiple products that defined their categories and changed the way we interact with music and information. It is not surprising that the secular world recognized Jobs’ greatness.

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As my wife and I prepared to leave a family gathering, saying our goodbyes to everyone, one of our young nephews asked, “Well, we’ll see you tomorrow, right?” An awkward pause worthy of the TV show “The Office” followed.

The next day one of our relatives was getting married outside the Church, and we were the only family members not attending. Our extended family had come to an unspoken agreement that there would be no public debates on this topic, deciding that no discussion was better than a heated argument, but, of course, our innocent young relative had no idea of the enactment of this familial policy. We quietly mumbled something to satisfy our nephew and then beat a hasty retreat to our car.

This scene is anything but atypical in Catholic families today. Not uncommon are brothers who proudly announce their vasectomies, cousins who are practicing homosexuals, and adult children who cohabitate before marriage; almost every Catholic has some family member openly defying Church teaching in some area of his life — with no trace of shame or guilt.

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The rosary: its history, use and power

There is perhaps no object more distinctively Catholic than the rosary. Yet many Catholics are no longer personally familiar with this form of prayer. As such, Bishop Frank J. Dewane has called upon our Diocese to rediscover this beautiful heritage and reawaken our love for it. As we celebrate the Month of the Rosary in October, we should take this opportunity to deepen our understanding and appreciation of one of the most common prayers of the Church. Where did we get the rosary? Why do we pray it? Why do some object to the praying of the rosary, claiming that it is unbiblical or antiquated?

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Also, the Rosary had a powerful impact on my own conversion to the Catholic Faith, which you can read about here.

A couple of links for your perusal in my absence:

• I often reflect on the dangers of getting consumed by today’s technology. Here is a good article about the importance of time alone, away from such technology.
• Two weeks ago I was on Radio Maria discussing my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew. Here is a podcast of the interview.

In Muslim countries like Pakistan, many of the young men begin studying the Koran as soon as they can read. In fact, many of them learn to read using the Koran. They read and discuss the Koran every day, for hours each day, every day of the week until they know it by heart. Many of them can recite whole sections of the Koran without thinking. Little by little, like water dripping on a stone, it shapes their whole view of the world—what’s right and what’s wrong; what’s important and what’s not.

Here in America, we have a similar kind of training. It’s called television.  The typical American spends between three and seven hours a day watching TV and sees well over 2 million commercials in the course of a lifetime.

That’s a form of education. And most of what we see on TV teaches us that buying a lot of products makes us happy; that young is good and old is bad; that we should eat whatever we want but that we also need to be thin; that suffering doesn’t have any meaning; that relationships never last; that most families are dysfunctional; that authority is dangerous; and that religious people are hypocritical.

None of us lives forever. Or rather, all of us live forever, but only for a very short time in this world.  If we lose our money, we can often earn it back.  But if we misuse our time, we can never get it back.  Where we put our time shows the world what we really value and believe. What we really believe shapes our choices.  And our choices shape our eternity.

Muslims didn’t develop their admirable piety in a vacuum.  They borrowed their reverence from Jews and early Christians, who had a profound love for the written Word of God in the Old and New Testaments.  The lesson for us today is simple.  American Catholics have the one true Word of God in the Bible.  If we took just one hour of the time we waste on television every day and used it to study and pray over the Gospels, we’d be fundamentally different people, and our country and our world would be transformed.

We were made for better things than silver and gold.  We’re more than what we own or think we want.  We’re children of God bought back from slavery by the blood of God’s son.  Somebody infinitely good, willingly died to make us free.  That’s how precious we are in the eyes of God.  God loves us infinitely.  That’s the source of our faith and hope.

God’s love is not something anyone can buy.  It’s a free gift.  But it comes with consequences.  If we really believe that God raised his son from the dead in order to raise us along with him, then we need to act like it.  We need to submit our time and our actions to what we claim to believe.  A meaningful life is a life conformed to imperishable things.  And a futile life is a life that puts its time in the wrong places—into things that perish; things that lead us away from conforming our lives to Jesus Christ.

Those are the two options.  We get to choose.

TV is such an accepted part of our culture that such an article appears radical. But the truth is that we have become so enslaved to television that it is difficult to see the wisdom in Archbishop Chaput’s words. What is especially true about his article is when he says that what we do shapes who we are. Almost four years ago I got rid of my television, and it was only after that act that I realized what an impact TV had on me. It shaped me and formed me in ways I would never have imagined.

For example, recently I went to a movie at the theater and saw the inevitable commercials before the main feature. Of course some were offensive, but what struck me was how inane and devoid of any value they all were. They presented the world in a way completely at odds with reality, yet everyone simply imbibes them with little or no thought – and I would never had noticed this myself if not for the fact that I almost never see commercials anymore. This is what Archbishop Chaput means when he says that TV is a form of education – it forms how we look at the world, even when we don’t realize it.

So what do we want forming us – TV or the Word of God?

That got me thinking about the difference between solitude and community, and which is the calling which leads us closer to God.

• On the one hand, many saints, such as St. Benedict and St. John of the Cross, craved solitude so that they could be alone with God – with no distractions and nothing to keep them from intimacy in prayer. Compare that to today’s culture which inundates us with noise and constant chatter, thus preventing us from entering into real meditation and contemplation.

• On the other hand, we are to be the one Body of Christ, a community which works and prays together in order to glorify God and be with him in heaven. Catholicism does not value the “lone ranger” who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps – it sees us as a united people who pray to “Our Father”, not “My Father”. Compare that with today’s culture which glorifies individualism and preaches the doctrine of self-sufficiency.

So which is it? Are we to strive for solitude or community? Each seem to have both their strengths and their dangers. I think the solution is found in communion, which is the proper integration and ordering of solitude and communion.

Communion always begins with our union with God. No human gathering can be a true union unless it is first based in union with God. This is why the saints craved solitude, because they wanted to strengthen their communion with God. This is also why the world screams so loudly today, to distract us from this communion with a flurry of the irrelevant.

From this union with God flows communion with our fellow men. A merely human group – such as the Elks club or a political party – might have a certain value, but ultimately it is meaningless without being based in our one common Father. Those who think that they can make it to heaven on their own are just kidding themselves. We need each other, but we can only help ourselves in proportion to our own communion with God.

This need for communion is universal across all vocations. The contemplative nun might spend eight hours in personal prayer a day, and a stay-at-home mom might only get in 30 minutes in a day, but they both need to base all their work on a deep and personal union – a communion – with God. Likewise, all of their dealings with others – whether it be other nuns, their children, or those in their parish – will only be fruitful and unitive if it is based on this communion with God.

God, in His great mercy, has given us a beautiful way to strengthen both types of communion – the Eucharist, which of course we call “communion.” In the Eucharist, we are personally and directly united to our Lord in the deepest way possible in this life. And in the Eucharist, we are also mystically united with our fellow brothers and sisters who receive this great sacrament. What a great gift God has given us!

No matter our vocation, let us pray for a deep communion with God which will then lead to a deep communion with others.

St. Benedict, pray for us!

Holiness for Everyone
The Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá
Foreword by Scott Hahn
Spring 2012, Our Sunday Visitor

Holiness for Everyone is a guidebook which gives practical advice on how anyone can become a saint. Since I am not a saint, however, I cannot write such a guidebook on my own, so I instead use the teachings of an actual saint – St. Josemaría Escrivá – as the basis for the book.

St. Josemaría

When Catholics hear mention of St. Josemaría, too many think, “Oh, he’s the Opus Dei saint,” and then relegate his life and teachings as applicable only to Opus Dei members. What a shame. As you will see in Holiness for Everyone, St. Josemaría developed over many years of work and prayer among laypeople a spirituality whose goal is the sanctity of every man and woman. He insisted that every person could, with the grace of God, achieve holiness through ordinary life and work. In other words, he did not intend his spirituality only for an elite group, or for those separate from the world, or for a select subset of laypeople. He intended it for all people, no matter their state in life.

The spirituality of St. Josemaría is for everyone – laborer, executive, mother, teacher – regardless of your state in life, the teachings of St. Josemaría can help you draw closer to God in ordinary life and grow in holiness. In this book I hope to make St. Josemaría’s teachings accessible to non-Opus Dei members so that they can benefit from them just as so many members of the apostolate he founded have for decades. St. Josemaría is a canonized saint of the entire Catholic Church, not just one segment of it.

I was honored to have Scott Hahn, a member of Opus Dei, write the foreword to the book. Here is an excerpt of his foreword:

My family within the family is called Opus Dei (Latin for “The Work of God), which was founded by St. Josemaria Escriva in 1928. The teachings of that saint are the subject of this wonderful book by Eric Sammons. I myself have written a book about “The Work.” It’s titled Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace: My Journey in Opus Dei, and it’s a personal account, an insider’s view, though addressed to anyone who might be interested or curious.

I could not have written a book like Eric’s. Perhaps I could not have written a book as useful as Eric’s, for he sees my family inheritance from a different perspective. He is not a member of Opus Dei — though he has studied its spirit and learned from it — and so he sees it from the outside. Sometimes that means he sees it more clearly and more attentively and more appreciatively. He has helped me to gain a better appreciation for the family life to which God has called me.

Eric knows that the heart of family life is the parent-child bond. In natural families, that heart is not always healthy. In no natural family is it perfect. But the heart of Opus Dei is something greater. Opus Dei draws its life from the fact of divine filiation — the fact that all Christians become children of God through baptism. That doctrine took hold of St. Josemaria Escriva as God inspired him to spell out what it means for children of God to live in a material world…

Eric Sammons shows that St. Josemaria has recovered the most powerful truth of classic Christianity and restated it in a way that is compelling for men and women (and children) of our time.

And to give a taste for the book, here is a detailed Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Called to Be Saints
• A Modern-Day Saint
• Laying the Foundations
  • Abba! Father!
    • Our Father God
    • Heirs to a King
    • Sons in the Son
  • Free to Love
    • Created Free
    • Limits Lead to Freedom
    • Many Paths to Holiness
    • “The Truth Will Make You Free”
    • Free to Surrender
    • Free to Start Anew
  • Ambitious for Holiness
    • “Zeal for Your House Consumes Me”
    • Excellence in All Things
    • Fighting Lukewarmness
    • Hating Sin
• Building a Saintly Life
  • Be a Contemplative in the Midst of the World
    • Live a Life of Prayer
    • Recognize the Presence of God
    • Make a Plan of Life
  • Make Your Work A Way to Heaven
    • Offer Your Work to God
    • Make the Secular Sacred
    • Take Flight from Fantasy
    • Work Out Your Salvation
  • Live in the Family of God
    • Follow the Pope
    • Love Mary
    • Honor St. Joseph
  • Proclaim Christ to the World
    • Be a Faithful Friend
    • Be an Apostle Not an Activist
    • Be Transformed
• Conclusion: “This is God’s Will for You, Your Sanctification”

I hope and pray that this book will help many people to grow in holiness and become what we are all meant to be: saints.