Advent with Ave Maria Press

Advent with Ave Maria Press

By Franci Revel Eckensberger, Lead Editor

Soon we’ll be clearing the Thanksgiving table and turning to light the first purple candle. We’re anticipating beauty, peace, and love this season . . . but every year, a familiar challenge looms large:

How do we best observe this sacred season and prepare for Christ’s Nativity when it also happens to be one of the most hectic, exhausting times of year?

On top of the end-of-year demands of work and school, there’s the gift shopping and wrapping, party hosting, travel plans, and school performances. We talk about it all the time, the chaos of December. Many of these rituals and traditions do hold greater depth than first meets the eye: it’s not all commercialized pressure. They can encourage closeness between us, honoring our mutual love and celebrating the light of Christ’s birth. But inevitably, the preparatory nature of Advent itself competes with our need to prepare for everything we’ve built around it. During Advent, we can find priorities hard to juggle. 

This Sunday, we’ll contemplate the theme of hope and likely feel the joyful anticipation that our faith inspires in us. So what’s the trick to maintaining that sense of anticipation and focus all month? How do we ensure that we emerge changed in the Christmas season, closer to Christ and better equipped for the year ahead?

Ava Maria Press offers a number of distinct devotionals for Advent 2025. Today, we encourage you to consider three of these devotionals for your Advent season. Each takes a different approach, but all are digestible, practical, and compact enough to tag along wherever you find yourself on any given day. 

Each author takes a different entry point to the same mystery: God entering our world, our time, our personal lives, for the sake of each of us. Which book will you choose this Advent? 

For the Youth

Advent and Christmas: One Day at a Time for Catholic Teens
Katie Prejean McGrady & Tommy McGrady
64 pages, 5×7 inches

While there’s no perfect time to engage your teenage children in the faith, Advent probably comes close. Christmas retains its magic for many teenagers, no matter how jaded they might be. Husband-and-wife team Katie Prejean McGrady and Tommy McGrady and use this to their advantage in Advent and Christmas: One Day at a Time for Catholic Teens,

We were blessed to welcome Katie to our podcast, A Resounding Yes!, back in the spring to discuss Pope Francis’ legacy, and we always appreciate the couple’s expertise in youth ministry. The pair have co-authored two books with Ave Maria Press focused on living the sacraments as a family: First Reconciliation and Beyond and First Communion and Beyond. 

Jesus, sometimes I do and say things
that make me not recognize myself.
Teach me how all the parts of my soul
are meant to exist in harmony
to bring glory to your name.
Amen
—The McGradys

The McGrady’s down-to-earth approach situates scripture in real-world situations, and with just one page per day, the devotions can be completed quickly. The “Feel Ambitious?” sections invite readers to take it a step further by contemplating scripture, having a conversation with a priest, praying a litany, or inviting your family to prayer. 

Saturdays are focused on the past week’s “wins,” while Sundays offer a variety of challenges to choose from, both practical and reflective. Each day, readers are called to “grow their soul” with clear instructions:

Write down the things that overwhelm you about our Catholic faith. 

Make a list of things you like to control, which stand in the way of being closer to Christ.

Ask a family member or friend what’s troubling them these days.

Unlike a more passive prayer book, this personal investment keeps young people engaged, relating, and active in their Advent journey—God is calling to them, by name, and wants them to know Him better this Advent. Without pretension or condescension, the McGradys make this clear to their readers, using realistic expectations of self-reflection to achieve a new intimacy with the Lord. 

The result is a realistic pathway to spiritual growth this season for a subset of individuals with highly specific needs and potential roadblocks to their faith. We recommend this book for all teens, youth ministers, parents, campus ministry programs, and educators.

We are lions, lambs, wolves, calves, oxen, and vipers. This chaotic menagerie seems awfully problematic, but when we humble ourselves enough to let a little child lead us and save us, then we will begin to instead become a harmony of love. 

—Katie Prejean McGrady & Tommy McGrady

Listen to our episode of A Resounding Yes! with Katie Prejean Mcgrady here!

For the Weary Heart

Find Peace in Advent!
Gary Zimak
160 pages, 5×7 inches

Early on in his devotional, “recovering worrier” Gary Zimak asks a question many of us have asked ourselves—how do you “prepare” for a birth that happened 2,000 years ago? 

Despite embracing a certain reverence for Lenten preparation practices, Zimak admits to having given in to the idea of Advent as a “waiting period” for Christmas during his younger years. Eventually, he finds an answer to his question in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (524)

Zimak runs with the idea of “decreasing” for the Lord to increase as a gateway into understanding this journey of Advent. This allows for a certain question to linger in the air as we move through the devotional: how does our stress, anxiety, and hopelessness impact our intimacy with Christ and our ability to truly trust in Him? How can we “decrease” this Advent? 

Zimak invites us to “follow the lead of the Holy Spirit,” and the reader senses that lead’s grace throughout his work. His voice is hospitable to those readers who may feel intimidated by a daily devotional—compassionate and familiar, yet also clear and honest. He is also welcoming to those who feel insecure in their understanding of the faith or their relationship with Christ. “The best way to welcome [Christ] is to learn who he is, why he matters, and how he fits into our lives,” he writes (53). His approach to the book facilitates this knowing: daily Mass readings begin each entry and are immediately reflected on with clarity and depth. Readers are then called to a guided response, followed by a prayer that addresses the anxieties we might be considering in response to the day’s themes. Zimak helps us to know Christ first through His Word and an intelligent commentary, then through our own contemplation and approachable prayers. Zimak never lets his reader flounder in abstract questions, unclear ideas, or shallow aphorisms.

The daily Mass readings keep us connected to the Church’s rhythms in our private prayer lives, extending the contemplation we may have begun during the morning’s service. Zimak also includes reflections for years A, B, and C, and a special reflection for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, ensuring that the book can be used for years to come.

As Zimak says, “faith is like a muscle” (13). This devotional gives you the tools to exercise it each day this Advent with a guide who has been there when it comes to consuming worry. While more substantive than many Advent devotionals, Find Peace in Advent! is certainly just as convenient as its shorter counterparts. The author has the ability to strike a special chord of practical guidance, enthusiastic spiritual insight, and scriptural literacy within five-minute daily entries. 

We recommend this devotional to anyone prone to anxiety, overwhelm, or hopelessness, especially during busy seasons. We also recommend it to those who want to explore what it really means to prepare for Christmas. If you’ve felt like liturgical seasons get lost in the shuffle of life, this book is for you. 

To put it simply, something always happens when we seek God in prayer and scripture. More often than not, peace is the first “something” produced by that meeting.
—Gary Zimak

Read our review of Gary Zimak’s Lord Save Me!: Prayers and Encouragement When Life Feels Hard here!

For the Music Lover

Away in a Manger: Daily Prayers for Advent and Christmas 2025
Ave Devotionals
64 pages, 5×7 inches

I am almost always listening to something, but I am no musician—indeed, for loving music so much, I’m quite ignorant about the topic and have made little effort to change that. I suppose it’s this ignorance that leads me to be surprised by the significant role that music plays in my experience of the Church seasons. My heart is deeply attached to the way liturgical shifts in character are expressed by our music, and I anticipate these shifts with great, full-bodied delight. Before returning to the Church, I found myself waiting impatiently to envelop my home with sacred music as soon as Advent began. I knew that the sounds were preparing me for something—now I know what that “something” was. 

This new Ave Devotional looks like the classic little Advent book, but it comes with a refreshing twist: each daily prayer begins with a few lyrics of a cherished Advent or Christmas hymn. A QR code on each page leads the reader to a playlist containing not just one but many versions of the day’s hymn by artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Ella Fitzgerald to the Redeemer Choir of Austin, Texas and the Dominican Sisters of Mary. The hymns are the inlet to the day, followed by a brief reflection and three prayers for morning, day, and night.

What could be more joyful?

The idea honors the beautiful ability that music has to shape our experience of the seasons as Catholics. There’s a warm, communal aspect to the idea, too—the shared playlist, the wide range of included artists, knowing that you’re listening to the same hymn alongside so many others while reading the same prayers. As the Introduction shares, we use music to “lift up our hearts,” to access our faith physically and emotionally. As we do in Mass, we lift our hearts together when we read this little volume. We are reminded that we never prepare for Christmas alone.

The QR code access is a welcome touch, making for a seamless experience. The time commitment is low, and the three prayers allow Christ to meet us joyfully throughout our busy day. Unsurprisingly, the reflections and prayers are wise, sound, and spiritually rich, and they integrate naturally with the chosen hymns. We recommend Away in a Manger to anyone seeking a contemplative, slim devotional with a fresh approach. We also especially recommend it to families who are looking for engaging ways to encounter the beauty of Advent together. 

 Christ isn’t waiting for Christmas to arrive in our hearts. Christ is with us now—in silence and song, wonder and joy—ready to enfold us in a loving embrace. Let us go to meet him together!
—Ave Devotionals

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Lead Editor Franci Revel Eckensberger holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Cornell University. With years of experience as a copyeditor for academics, fellow writers, and various small businesses, she takes pride in maintaining clarity, consistency, and beauty in each client’s voice. 

Franci finds grace and insight in the Catholic Church’s rich relationship to language and invites that relationship to influence both her literary and editorial work. Saint Cecilia and Catherine of Siena continue to play a vital role in her journey to the faith as an artist. She lives in coastal Delaware with her husband.