I am excited to announce that my latest book, Holiness for Everyone, has just been released! Yesterday I received a box full of the book (an author’s most joyous moment), and am shipping them out to all who have ordered them this week. What’s that? You haven’t ordered a copy yet? Well, waste no time and get to it.

In case you are hestitating, asking yourself, “Will this book help me?” and “Am I really included in ‘Everyone’?”, let me give you a few points to consider.

First, let me say what this book is NOT about:

• It is not a biography of St. Josemaría Escrivá.
• It is not a book about Opus Dei.
• It is not a book about how holy I am (as that would be quite a tall tale).
• It is not a history of how people have become holy.

So, what is this book about? I’m glad you asked:

• It is a book about how YOU can become holy.
• It is a book which helps resolve the tension between our “church life” and our “secular life,” and how both can be used to draw us closer to God.
• It is a book for literally everybody – businessman, stay-at-home mom, construction worker, etc. Every life situation can be a means to holiness.
• Since I am not holy, it is a book which uses the proven guidance of a canonized saint to help you develop a practical plan to achieve holiness.
• It is a book which Scott Hahn has called “wonderful.”

In a nutshell, Holiness for Everyone is a guide that takes you step-by-step through a practical means for becoming exactly what God wants you to be: a Saint!

If you are still not convinced, feel free to download the Introduction and Chapter 1 to get a taste for the book.

Order now!

In the latest issue of OSV Newsweekly, I examine the adulation given to Steve Jobs and compare his life to a true modern-day saint, St. Josemaría Escrivá:

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.

Continue reading…

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism. St. Benedict is most famous for organizing monks into a community, thus establishing the basic form in which all Western monks have lived ever since then. But St. Benedict originally wanted to be a solitary monk – i.e. a hermit – not someone who lived in community. It was only after other men followed him that he begin to establish an order for them to live in community.

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!

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

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.

Today is the feast of St. Irenaeus, the 2nd century bishop of Lyons and the first great Western theologian of the Church. St. Irenaeus had to defend and explain the Faith in the face of many attacks, both internally and externally.

One of the greatest issues facing the 2nd century Church was how to unify the various apostolic traditions within the Church. There were some who felt that one or another particular apostle was the “true” apostle who was most faithful to Christ’s teachings and that only he should be followed. For example, the heretic Marcion in the middle of the 2nd century taught that only St. Paul was to be trusted, and that the other apostles had diverged from the deposit of faith. Marcion even went so far as to create a biblical canon that only included Paul’s letters and the Gospel of Luke, which of course was written by Paul’s faithful companion.

But the tension between the followers of the various apostles occurred within the Church as well. We see it in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, when the apostle scolds the Corinthian Christians for claiming to be followers of Apollos or of Paul (1 Cor. 3:4). This continued in the 2nd century with the Quartodeciman controversy. This was the debate between the Church of Rome and the Churches in Asia Minor over the dating of Easter. The Church of Rome, following the Petrine example, always celebrated Easter on a Sunday. But in Asia Minor, Easter was celebrated according to the date of Passover on the Jewish calendar, even if it was not a Sunday, and this was a practice they inherited from John the Apostle. Each was an apostolic practice, and the debate threatened to throw the Church into its first schism.

It is in this environment that St. Irenaeus served as bishop. The saint was a firm defender of apostolic diversity – that the Church should assimilate and accept all legitimate apostolic practices and teachings. He convinced the Pope not to excommunicate the Christians in Asia Minor over the dating of Easter, arguing that it was not a matter over which the Church should be split. He also advocated the acceptance of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, rather than only accepting one Gospel or attempting to harmonize the four into one single writing. As he writes in his great work, Against the Heresies,

For, after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down [upon them], were filled from all [His gifts], and had perfect knowledge: they departed to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things [sent] from God to us, and proclaiming the peace of heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess the Gospel of God. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 1)

As you can see, St. Irenaeus accepted each Gospel as apostolic and each one as a legitimate retelling of the story of Jesus. In many ways, it would be easier to only accept one apostolic strain or to harmonize them into a single composition. But this would not be faithful to the fullness of the Gospel message. Each written Gospel – and each apostolic witness – tells us something different about God’s plan of salvation in Christ, and the Church would be much poorer if not for the work of men like St. Irenaeus to preserve the totality of the apostolic preaching.

St. Irenaeus, pray for us!

Donatello's St. John the Baptist

Today is the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist – one of only three birthdays we celebrate on the liturgical calendar. John is the voice which proclaims the Word. The great Scripture scholar Origen once wrote about the deep unity between John and his cousin Jesus:

[A]s the Saviour is speech, John is voice. John himself invites me to take this view of him, for to those who asked who he was, he answered, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord! make His paths straight!” . . . A voice must be perceived with the ears if the mind is afterwards to receive the speech which the voice indicates. Hence, John is, in point of his birth, a little older than Christ, for our voice comes to us before our speech. But John also points to Christ; for speech is brought forward by the voice. . . . In a word, when John points out Christ, it is man pointing out God, the Saviour incorporeal, the voice pointing out the Word. (Commentary on John 26)

Today we are called to be the “voice” which proclaims the Word and prepares others to receive him. St. John the Baptist, pray for us!

In honor of Trinity Sunday, I want to share with you one of the best – and definitely funniest – videos about St. Patrick. The scene where he compares the Trinity to a shamrock is particularly funny:

The cause for canonization for the priest who established Opus Dei in the United States has been opened:

Fr. Joseph Muzquiz

The Archdiocese of Boston has opened the cause for canonization of Father Joseph Muzquiz, a priest of Opus Dei who established the personal prelature in the United States and worked for many years in the greater Boston area.

Some 150 people, many of whom are local members of Opus Dei, gathered June 2 at the archdiocese’s pastoral center for the formal opening of Father Muzquiz’s cause, reports The Pilot newspaper of the archdiocese.

“All Christians are called to be saints and we are deeply grateful that the Archdiocese of Boston is undertaking this effort to see whether Father Joseph Muzquiz indeed truly lived a holy life,” said Opus Dei spokesman Brian Finnerty.

Father Muzquiz was born in Spain in 1912. He joined the Nationalist army during the Spanish Civil War after his city was taken over by Nationalist forces. In 1941, he was admitted to Opus Dei.

Father Muzquiz was one of the first three men ordained as priests for Opus Dei and helped start Opus Dei not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Japan and Venezuela. During the 1960s and 1970s he worked in Europe and pressed for the canonization of the order’s founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.

He returned to the United States in 1981, and remained in the country until his death in 1983.

Continue reading…

If you are interested in the life of Fr. Muzquiz, I would highly recommend his biography Putting Down Roots by John Coverdale. It is an amazing story of faith and perseverance!

Opus Dei is again in the press, this time because of the release of the movie There Be Dragons, which is somewhat based on the life of Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá. Whenever Opus Dei comes up, it seems that strong opinions and even controversy is sure to follow. Some of this is understandable – after all, any organization that quickly grows and becomes as influential as Opus Dei is sure to attract both strong friends and enemies – but some of it is also laughable for those who even have an inkling of knowledge of the group. But one thing I’ve noticed is how often in many minds the scandals involved with another Catholic movement – the Legion of Christ – have impacted Opus Dei.

The reason for this is due to the many similarities between Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ. A few include:

• Both were founded by Spanish-speaking men in the first half of the 20th century.
• Both desired to promote an orthodox understanding of the Catholic faith.
• Both were embraced by the Church hierarchy as a means to reform the Church after the troubles that followed Vatican II.
• Both focused on helping lay people grow in holiness in their daily lives.
• Both dramatically increased in size and influence in a short period of time.
• Both have been strongly attacked by outside forces, as well as by former members.

Because of these similarities, these two organizations have melded in many people’s minds almost into a single entity. So when the Legion faced serious scandals, some held Opus Dei in suspicion as well. I will admit to doing this myself. I personally have felt for some time that the Legion should be disbanded, and my strong feelings towards them seeped into my view of Opus Dei as well. I was suspicious that the failings of the Legion (which don’t just include the failings of its founder) were replicated by Opus Dei.

But over time I realized that my thoughts were an injustice to Opus Dei, which in fact is not in any real way related to the Legion. The similarities I mentioned above are superficial and none really relate to the Legion scandals. So to judge Opus Dei based on the sins of the Legion would be like judging Abel for the sins of Cain. And in fact, there is one big difference between the two organizations, which is:

The Legion of Christ doesn’t offer assassination training to its albino monks.

No, wait a minute, that’s not right (but realize that all articles on Opus Dei are required to have at least on albino monk joke). The real difference between the two groups is:

Opus Dei was founded by a canonized saint. The Legion of Christ was founded by one of the most notorious scoundrels who ever lived.

One cannot overemphasize this point too much. In the Catholic tradition, religious orders and movements are integrally linked to their founders. An authentic movement is faithful to its founder and keeps his or her spirit and teaching alive for future generations. In the case of Opus Dei, its founder has been officially recognized by the Church as living the faith heroically and in a way that can be imitated. In the case of the Legion, its founder has been recognized as a deceiver, an abuser, and an all-around scoundrel of the first order. Not exactly someone whose spirit we should keep alive, is it?

This of course does not mean that Opus Dei is for everyone or that its members have not sinned or done things at times improperly. But it does mean that as Catholics we should treat Opus Dei as we would the Franciscans or the Dominicans: as an authentic movement founded by a holy man whom we can look to as a heroic example of someone who lived the Christian faith well.

A new trailer has been posted for the movie “There Be Dragons” and it emphasizes much more than previous trailers the central figure of St. Josemaría Escrivá:

Also, it looks like the release date has been set: May 6, 2011.

One of the greatest aspects of the Gospels is their striking realism. Reading the Evangelists’ accounts of the life of Jesus is like taking a step back in time and immersing yourself in the life of Jesus and his closest followers. One of the most striking features is how the various characters are depicted – no one is a cardboard cutout; instead each person is shown for the unique personality he or she is.

We see this especially in the depictions of the apostles: these are not cult-like drones who are identical in their reactions and personalities. They are each unique persons who follow Christ for different reasons,with different intensities and from different backgrounds. But none is more unique than the “beloved disciple” John, whose feast we celebrate today. He is unique among apostles in a variety of ways:

• He is the youngest apostle, being in his teens when the Lord called him.
• He is the only apostle to remain with Jesus at the Cross.
• Jesus, while dying on the Cross, entrusted his mother Mary to John’s care.
• He is the only apostle not to be martyred.
• He is the only apostle to compose an apocalyptic writing.
• He was the most beloved by Jesus of all the apostles.

Each and every follower of Christ is an individual child of God who will follow the Lord in a unique way. Although there are general guidelines we all will follow (prayer, the sacraments, etc.), we must always be careful not to force other disciples of Christ into a man-made box. Instead, we should all find our own unique path to discipleship within Christ’s body, the Church.

St. John, apostle and evangelist, pray for us!

It is generally agreed that the most influential non-biblical figure on Western Christianity is St. Augustine. It is impossible to overestimate his impact on Christian thought in the West during the Middle Ages and beyond. Thus, he is often called the “Father of the Western Church”.

But what if there was no St. Augustine? What if he remained a Manichean or simply a pagan? How would the Church be different? One thing is for sure, it would be a lot poorer. But Augustine did become a Christian, primarily through the influence of two people: his faithful mother St. Monica and St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, spiritual father to St. Augustine, and the saint whose feast we celebrate today.

St. Ambrose

Augustine moved to Milan at the same time he was struggling with his Manichean faith, and the preaching of Ambrose had a profound impact on his life. A primary way in which Ambrose impacted Augustine was in his approach to Sacred Scripture. Augustine had a very condescending view of the Bible; to his brilliant mind he believed the Scriptures to be poorly written literature which no intellectual like himself could take seriously (sound familiar?). But when he saw how Ambrose interpreted the Scriptures symbolically, understanding that often the literal sense of a passage doesn’t mean the same as literalism, Augustine’s eyes were opened to the Bible’s beauty and power. When Augustine realized that a brilliant mind like Ambrose’s could embrace Christianity, he soon did the same.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of your witness in spreading the Christian Faith – for all you know you might be influencing the next Augustine!

St. Ambrose, pray for us!

A man born in Gary, Indiana has been raised to the altars of the Serbian Orthodox Church:

From his childhood in Gary to his death in Yugoslavia, St. Varnava always protected his faith and was dedicated to a Christian life.

St. Varnava is the first American-born Serbian to be proclaimed an Orthodox saint, said the Rev. Thomas Kazich, who also is a Gary native…

Varnava went to Froebel Elementary School while he and his family lived in Gary for about nine years. They moved Yugoslavia in 1923, Kazich said.

When he finished the equivalent of high school, Varnava’s father took him to see Bishop Nicholai Velimirovich to receive the bishop’s blessing to study theology.

“As (Varnava) wrote, ‘Theology is the science of sciences,’ ” Kazich said.

The bishop gave him his blessing, and he started his studies.

Kazich said Varnava’s family was influential in his upbringing in the church. He said everyone in the church has a spiritual guide, and “his spiritual father was his own father.”

Varnava was ordained a priest in the early 1940s, and the Serbian Church elected him to become a bishop in 1947, Kazich said.

Varnava began to preach against the Communist way of life after becoming a bishop, and Yugoslavia’s Communist government arrested him on treason charges.

During his trial, Varnava wasn’t allowed to deliver a final defense plea because “it was feared that he would expose and reveal the government’s criminal, terroristic and tyrannical policies,” according to a report written by Kazich.

In 1948, Varnava was sentenced to 11 years at one of the worst prisons at the time in Yugoslavia, Kazich said.

He spent about three years there, and the government intended to kill him when he was being transferred to another prison, Kazich said. He was placed on a train car with other prisoners, and the government ran another train into the car, he said.

Varnava survived the crash, but his legs were broken.

“And he suffered from that for the rest of his life,” Kazich said.

Due to health problems, Varnava was released from prison in 1951, but he always was under guard by the Communist government until he died in 1964.

Kazich said Varnava died under suspicious circumstances, and many believe he was poisoned. He said an autopsy couldn’t be conducted at the time.

Kazich said Varnava’s family knew he didn’t have a history of illness. He also wrote letters to them about his good health prior to his death.

No matter the circumstances, Varnava always remained “a follower of Christ,” Matic said.

“He became one of the strongest protectors of his faith,” he said.

Continue reading…

We should never forget that saints can come from anywhere – even your own neighborhood, even your own house!

Here is another trailer that looks behind the scenes of the upcoming movie about St. Josemaría Escrivá, There Be Dragons:

Let us never forget that there are still martyrs in our day:

Islamic militants attack Baghdad Catholic parish during Mass; dozens slain

Gunmen linked with al-Qaeda stormed a Catholic church in Baghdad during Mass on October 31.

“They entered the church with their weapons, wearing military uniforms,” said an 18-year-old who survived the attack. “They came into the prayer hall and immediately killed the priest.”

After the gunmen took the worshippers hostage, US troops and Iraqi police stormed the parish in a rescue attempt. One gunman detonated a suicide belt, and a shootout ensued, leaving 39 hostages and seven members of security forces dead.

The Islamic State of Iraq– the Iraqi al-Qaeda affiliate– said it was responsible for attacking what it called “the dirty place of the infidel which Iraqi Christians have long used as a base to fight Islam.”

All you angels and saints, pray for us!