Lenten Campaign 2025
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More than 90 years after its publication, The Way by St. Josemaria Escriva has climbed to the top 10 of the Amazon bestseller list for nonfiction books, thanks to its inclusion in a prayer app’s Lenten series.
As of March 17, The Way is ranked number seven on the nonfiction bestseller chart on Amazon, and is ranked number one on the seller’s “Christian Inspirational,” “Christian Devotionals (Books)” and “Inspirational Spirituality (Books)” charts.
St. Josemaria Escriva was a Spanish priest and the founder of Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church consisting of both laypeople and priests. Escriva was canonized in 2002, 27 years after his death in 1975.
This year, Hallow’s “Pray40” community prayer challenge is centered on passages from The Way, according to Hallow’s website.
“Jonathan Roumie, Sr. Miriam James Heidland, Fr. Mike Schmitz, and Mark Wahlberg will serve as guides for the prayer challenge, whose theme will be The Way based on the powerful verse John 14:6 ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’”
The “Pray40” prayer challenge updates each day through Lent. Each day features a new reflection.
Alex Jones, CEO and co-founder of Hallow, told Aleteia that the company was “thrilled” to feature The Way in this year’s Pray40 challenge.
The Way, said Jones, “has been one of the most impactful books to my own spiritual life and it is a blessing to get to share it with the community on Hallow.”
This year’s Pray40 is the largest that Hallow has ever done. It has brought together “hundreds of thousands of people” in prayer.
“We’ve already heard countless stories of lives being changed and people coming back to the Lord through it,” said Jones, adding, “Glory to God.”
Still relevant at 90 years old
John Coverdale, the author of several books about the history of Opus Dei, told Aleteia he was “delighted” to see The Way on bestsellers lists.
“But to me, the really impressive thing is how 90 years after it first appeared, it continues to speak to many people, young and old, from different countries and different walks of life,” said Cloverdale.
Despite its age, The Way remains relevant to a modern audience due to “its message that sanctity in daily life is not only a theoretical goal, but a practical possibility for many people – including the reader,” he said.
Coverdale continued, saying, “the idea that God wants me to personally love him with my whole heart and soul and to really love my neighbor as myself is very powerful.”
“An especially important part of that message is St. Josemaría’s stress on the fact that God calls me to love and serve him not despite having a demanding job, or a sick child, or irritating colleagues, but precisely in and through those facets of my daily life,” said Cloverdale.
Cloverdale additionally believes that the book’s “vividness of lived experience” is able to resonate with readers.
“The Way is not a theoretical treatise, but a book derived directly from the author’s own dealing personally with God, and from the experience of the people he knew,” he said.
“A spiritual mountain”
For Angela Fortunato, a numerary member of Opus Dei who lives in Chicago, reading The Way while in high school changed her life.
“The Way redirected my life towards God,” Fortunato told Aleteia. “Instead of merely being a good student, I tried to be a student working next to and for Our Lord. I came to appreciate St Josemaria’s message that I could live my Christian calling to be a beloved child of God as a student precisely by uniting myself to God the Son and thus entering the mystery of love that God revealed about Himself.”
Since reading The Way, she has spent her life “sharing the mystery of God’s love with others.”
Fortunato, who is the assistant head of school at the Willows Academy, sees many of her students reading and praying with the book.
It is written in a manner that the reader can grow up alongside it, said Fortunato.
“I recommend the teenage girls to focus on the early chapters and really seek God’s help to build their character and those habits, and then later in high school and college and throughout their adult life to read and re-read the later chapters,” she said.
Escriva, she said, “leads the reader up a spiritual mountain.”
“At the top of which one becomes not just someone seeking holiness, but in fact ‘an apostle of apostles,’” she said.
And today we celebrate...