Epiphany, Easter, and Everything I’ve Been Bursting To Tell You

I wrote a brand-new book! Living Easter: 50 Days to Practice Resurrection

HAPPY FEAST OF LIGHT & MYSTERY & REVELATION & OUTSIDERS!

You know I love this feast. One year I led a whole retreat on Epiphany, and maybe we should do that again sometime? Our world is craving light, any flash of hope, any star to follow. And goodness, sacred stories of welcoming strangers and shunning tyrants and bringing our gifts to God—yes please, more of this, all year long, ring out the bells, cast down the mighty from their thrones, lift up the least and lowly, follow the light, return home by a different way, all of it.

If you can’t tell, I’m extra excited this Epiphany. BECAUSE TODAY I GET TO SHARE A NEW BOOK I WROTE FOR YOU!

She’s hardcover. She’s beautiful. She’ll take you from Easter Sunday through Pentecost, guide you through every Gospel story on Resurrection, and give you daily prayers and practices to live out the whole Easter season.

In a word, she’s a dream. I can’t wait to see her in your hands.

We always think of Lent as the spiritual season to dig in and do the hard work of prayer. But then we arrive at Easter’s doorstep ready to rejoice—for fifty full days?! How can we celebrate for so long, especially when the weary world and our own hard lives can make it feel impossible to keep the Resurrection in our sights? This book is my answer. It’s full of Resurrection practices: fresh ways to live out the spirit of Easter each day.¹

Official blurb incoming from Ave Maria Press:

As the most significant season of the Church year, Easter deserves to be lived well and celebrated fully, and few voices speak more compellingly about Christian joy than Laura Kelly Fanucci, celebrated author and creator of The Holy Labor newsletter and the Mothering Spirit platform. “Living Easter celebrates joy itself as our Resurrection practice,” Fanucci writes. “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.”

With a stunning design, Living Easter invites you to embrace the Resurrection as a living reality, guiding you through fifty days of scripture, reflection, prayer, and action. With warmth and joy, Fanucci shows how to celebrate Easter with this simple, easy-to-follow daily companion—just open to the day’s reading and reflection, no preparation required.

Each day of Living Easter includes a Scripture passage from the Gospels or Acts of the Apostles, a reflection on the Scripture for our lives today, a short prayer, and a daily practice—creative, simple ways to keep celebrating Easter for 50 full days.

My favorite part of Living Easter is the 7 brand-new essays I wrote on key figures from the Easter Scriptures: Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Peter, Mary the Mother of God, the Myrrhbearers (yes, they’re back!), the disciples at Emmaus, and the whole group at Pentecost.

When I dove into each of their stories and dwelled with what they teach us about living Easter today, I was amazed at their fierce faith, their wide-eyed wonder, and their willingness to wrestle with what seemed impossible. To be honest, each of these friends of Jesus became a companion to me in a way I never expected. What they taught me is the gift I now get to share with you.

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I know: it’s Epiphany. Still Christmas, not yet Lent. You might think Easter is far-off, but would you believe Ash Wednesday is six weeks from tomorrow? Time to make your Lenten plans, and more importantly—since preparing for Easter is the whole purpose of Lent—time to plan your Easter prayer, too.

You can pre-order Living Easter now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop. Or you can order directly from Ave and save 20% with code FANUCCI20. The book releases on March 6th, so it will be in your hands well before Easter dawns—a ray of hope pointing toward Resurrection and don’t we all need that these days?!

I’ll have more (free!) Lent & Easter resources to accompany this book and share with you in the coming weeks. But for now it would be a huge gift if you’d pre-order this book or share the news with your family, friends, or church.² As a Catholic I wrote it from my own tradition but always with a heart toward any Christians who want to pray through this liturgical season (maybe for the first time!) since it can be used for personal reflection, small groups, families, or a whole parish community.

Epiphany ice this morning. Photo credit to my spouse. Ice is gorgeous but also the reason that this book announcement did not arrive to you at dawn as planned, because 4/5 of my beloved children are now home due to cancelled school. Bless.

Epiphany and Easter are both feasts of light, hope, and joy. They reveal God’s great plan of love. They turn our expectations upside down. They lead us into wonder and worship. And they invite us to return back to our ordinary lives by a different way, in the light of faith.

Today is the perfect day to share this book with you: light from light. As you have shared in my sorrow and suffering over the years, thank you too for sharing this joy with me.

Wendell Berry wrote that we must “practice resurrection.”³ What hope to keep before our eyes as a new year dawns: the deepest truth that Easter was meant to be our everyday companion.

What questions do you have? What more do you want to know about Living Easter? Share below & I’ll answer away!

1. If you have the earlier book I wrote on Easter years ago, this version is brand-new and more than twice as long. Ave Maria Press also designed it to be an heirloom hardcover edition that you can use year after year. After everything I’ve lived through in recent years (surviving cancer topping the list), I’ve learned so much about Resurrection and our deep need for joy that it was time to revisit this sacred season in a whole new way. I’m grateful to Ave for the chance to renew and recreate this work, and I’m thrilled to offer it to you.

2. FYI: pre-orders are one of The Most Important Things you can do to support an author. The number of pre-orders determines the number of copies that each book behemoth will keep in stock. I always try to pre-order my author friends’ books for this very reason, but two of the perks are 1) the book often shows up a few days before its official publication date; 2) it’s always a surprise in the mail when it comes, and what’s better than book mail?!

3. Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” I’m excited about my book and all, but Wendell’s wisdom will be the best thing you read today, hands down.

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