I am very excited to announce my next book:

Holiness for Everyone
The Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá
Foreword by Scott Hahn
Spring 2012, Our Sunday Visitor ^[1]

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.

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.