Twenty Something / Christina Capecchi

Second by second, minute by minute, day by day, God is moving in us

Easter gets the short end of the stick.

That’s what author Laura Kelly Fanucci concluded. Any Catholic can tell you what the 40 days of Lent entail, rattling off the terms: praying, fasting and almsgiving.

But ask about the 50 days of Easter, and many get stuck on an egg hunt and “Alleluia.”

Then what?

“Why aren’t we living Easter more deliberately?” Fanucci found herself asking.

The 45-year-old Minnesota mother explores this question in her new book, Living Easter, published by Ave Maria Press. “I set it up as a creative, theological challenge: How would you think about sustaining the practice of a whole season of Easter?”

The book illuminates the Church’s most consequential liturgical season, gathering every Scripture story of the Resurrection into daily entries with Fanucci’s reflections and action items. They’re all tucked into a beautiful, hand-sized hardcover.

“Living Easter celebrates joy itself as our resurrection practice,” Fanucci writes in the introduction. “Taking up joy as a daily discipline teaches us about feasting as a companion practice to fasting: an intentional sacred act that draws us closer to God.”

That doesn’t mean being cheerful for 50 consecutive days, Fanucci is quick to clarify. “It’s OK if you’re not feeling very Easter-y, if things aren’t looking like bunnies and chocolate,” she told me. “Easter is for all of us—especially those who are suffering or lost or grieving. That’s exactly the kind of people that the first Easter came for.”

Fanucci has plenty of firsthand experience.

Three years ago, she received a horrifying diagnosis: triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the potentially deadly condition. A decade ago, she lost twin girls hours after their birth.

“Even in their dying, I could feel something of the life they were being born into or were going to hold onto,” said Fanucci, who is now cancer free and a mom of five boys. “I came to a really deep understanding of the reality of the Resurrection. God does impossible things. He makes a way where there seems to be none. In small ways and big ways, resurrection is at the heart of my faith.”

Every page of the book is colored by her medical journey.

“Dying and rising are woven into creation. Surviving cancer helped me see that is part of what it means to be human,” said Fanucci, who lives in St. Michael, Minn., and is a member of St. Joseph the Worker Parish in

Maple Grove, Minn. “God’s work of resurrection is always going on in the world.”

That conviction anchors Fanucci when war dominates the headlines and immigration raids sever her community.

Creating this book meant spending time with the saints who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection—Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Peter, Mary. They provided a companionship that Fanucci never could’ve anticipated.

She pairs her profound insights with simple action items for each day of Easter: pick flowers, bake bread, sing, take a walk, bless with holy water, call a friend, share a story about God.

Faith-based writing has always animated Fanucci, who has written more than a dozen books and houses her work at laurakellyfanucci.com. Lately she’s felt compelled to cast a wider net of readership.

“Increasingly, I have such a yearning to write for those who don’t feel certain of their faith, who maybe don’t feel included in the Church,” she said. “The most meaningful feedback I get is when folks say: ‘I stopped going to Mass decades ago, but I really like what you’re saying and it’s made me think maybe I believe this, too.’ ”

She’s clear on her goal. “It’s a dream I have to help people strengthen their imagination to see how God is at work around us, so we don’t file away resurrection as an idea or a historical event. This isn’t the end. There is hope.”
 

(Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Grey Cloud Island, Minn.) †