Holy Heroes Review: St. Kateri and St. Cecilia Glory Stories

A while back I was given the opportunity to review the rereleased Saint Kateri Tekakwitha and Saint Cecilia Glory Stories audio CD.  If you've never heard of Glory Stories, let me give you a brief run down of them.  These audio CDs are dramatic retellings of the lives of saints complete with sound effects that make you feel like you're in the middle of the story.  We've been collecting Glory Stories for a few years now.  The girls like them because it's essentially like listening to a great audio book.

My girls seem to have a special liking for St. Cecilia.  They're in the children's choir for our parish and on many occasions they have pointed out that St. Cecilia is on the stained glass window behind the choir.  Ellie, likes to look her up in different saints books that we have around the house.  So she was pretty happy when she found out we had a St. Cecilia Glory Story.  I think after listening to this CD she had an even greater appreciation for this favored saint than she did from stories she had read about her in our books.  In short, I think having the opportunity to listen to the Glory Stories retelling of St. Cecelia gave her a deeper appreciation for her and what it must have been like to be an early Christian.

The girls enjoyed listening to St. Kateri Tekakwitha's story.  Most of the saints books that we have have very little information on her so up until very recently the girls didn't know very much about her, particularly Ellie.  Madeline had read an Encounter the Saints book about her, in which she had learned quite a lot about St. Kateri.  When the girls listened to the Glory Story for St. Kateri, Madeline concurred that much of what was in the story was what she had read in her book, and Ellie really enjoyed learning so much about her.

The rerelease of this Glory Stories CD also has bonus tracks about the miracles that made Kateri a wain.  Some of Holy Heroes Adventure Guides interviewed the mother of the boy and her son who's miraculous healing from a flesh eating bacteria was the miracle needed to help the canonization process for Kateri to move forward so she could be declared a saint.  The bonus tracks didn't captivate my girls the way the Glory Stories did, but I found the interview to be quite interesting and I'm glad they decided to add it to the CD.

While we usually break out the Glory Stories on Saints' feast days, these CDs are really great to listen to any time of the year.  They're good to listen to in the car or even when you at home and doing something like a puzzle or building with Legos.  The stories are each about 15-20 minutes long which makes them ideal for using in a religious education class, too.

Glory Stories make great fillers for stocking and Easter baskets.  That's where our girls typically find these CDs.  Holy Heroes has lots of great Glory Stories titles to choose from, including our favorite Blessed John Paul II.

I was provided with a review copy of Glory Stories Volume V: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha and Saint Cecilia  by the publisher, Holy Heroes, in exchange for my honest review.  For more information on Glory Stories, visit Holy Heroes.  While you're there be sure to sign up for their Lenten Adventure. It's free!