FAITH AT HOME Ask any teenager anxious about where they’ll sit in the cafeteria for lunch. Ask any widow or widower learning to cook for one. Ask a grandparent planning a holiday feast, a parent volunteering to host the team banquet, or anyone taking a head count for how many friends are staying for […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: When you’re sick of being sick
FAITH AT HOME Here is a story that every family I know can tell: all of us have been sick. For a long, long time. In the past few months our household has endured countless rounds of colds and coughs, flu and fevers. With four kids in school and one toddler at home it’s not […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Jesus was a teenager, too
FAITH AT HOME If I asked you to imagine Jesus’ childhood, you’d likely picture him as a baby in the manger. But have you ever considered that Christ was once a teenager, too? In this season that sings of “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,” we can forget that the incarnation means Jesus […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: The wisdom of night prayer
FAITH AT HOME “Lord, now let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled.” Thus begins the Canticle of Simeon, the prayer drawn from the words of the prophet who held the baby Jesus in the Temple at the presentation (Lk 2:29-32), a prayer often known by its Latin name “Nunc Dimittis” (“now […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Trust the manna
FAITH AT HOME We’re flying by the seat of our pants. School is back in swing. Work is back to busy-as-usual. Meanwhile, gas and groceries cost more than ever, and the future feels uncertain depending on the hour or the headlines. It’s hard to know where to place our hope or trust these days. Lately […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Where is God on your calendar?
FAITH AT HOME Where does God show up on your calendar? I pose this as a real question, not a rhetorical one. If someone found your planner on the bus or a stranger glanced at your calendar on the wall or a hacker gained access to your phone’s events, would they see any sign you […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Catching God at the ballfield
FAITH AT HOME As a mother of five boys, I have spent countless nights at baseball fields, but never have I glimpsed God in the dugout until tonight. Can I confess that I was bored by my own son’s game — bored only because his team was winning and he’d finished pitching, so my attention […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: Speaking of resurrection
FAITH AT HOME By Laura Kelly Fanucci We don’t talk enough about resurrection. How a marriage can be resurrected: How what felt dead and gone, ready to be buried in the dark earth forever, is not always dead and gone. How a friendship can be resurrected: How speaking hard words can breathe new life into […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: How to work for mercy at home
FAITH AT HOME We tend to look outside our walls to ask how we can help. Where are the hungry or homeless in our community? How can we care for those in poverty or prison? But the works of mercy call us to look closer: to see those around us as Christ, too. Often it’s […]
Laura Kelly Fanucci: What would God do?
FAITH AT HOME Tonight the news is swirling from the radio as I cook dinner. Is the world on the brink of war? I stir and fret, trying to pray. The kids rush in from the yard, dripping snow and mud from their boots. Sweaty and flushed, they fling themselves at the table, hungry and […]