How Holy Heroes Stirs Catholic Imagination

How one family shares the faith

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Ken and Kerri Davison co-founded Holy Heroes (HolyHeroes.com), best known for its flagship “Glory Stories” audio saint dramas and the online Holy Heroes’ “Adventures,” which feature their children as the “Adventure Guides.”

As the parents of eight children, ranging from age 8 to 22, the Davisons began “Advent Adventure” as a free online family project eight years ago to teach other children about Advent. It was so enthusiastically received by the thousands of families who signed up that it led to “Lenten Adventure,” “Spiritual Adoption Prayer Adventure,” and, within a few years, Holy Heroes became Ken’s full-time work and a wonderful way of involving the Davison family in evangelization and catechesis.

 

How did you begin the Holy Heroes’ adventures?

Ken: We needed to teach our kids that Advent is not Christmas. Thanks to many Christmas parties all December long, most people miss the whole preparation period.

Kerri: We want to teach the kids to live a Catholic life, not an easy thing in modern culture. You start realizing this is not a culture that supports Catholic life, so you have to make your own culture as a Catholic — not just Advent and Lent, though they are most countercultural, but a Catholic culture in the home — all the time.

 

How did this go beyond your own home?

Ken: We used the Internet to provide a fun and free way to reach other families with the traditions of Advent that so captivated our children. It’s a rich time of preparation for the celebration that comes later. I envisioned a half dozen or so YouTube videos, spaced throughout Advent. But my wife and children created at least one for every single day, except Sundays. (Jokingly) I blame my wife and children for being over-enthusiastic.

 

What’s your goal since this simple start snowballed into so much more?

Ken: We want to provide a variety of materials to help families bring the joy of the faith into their homes, reaching all ages — while making it easy on Mom. Often, it seems the approach is to share ways to “distract” the youngest children, during the Rosary, for example. But our approach is to help you attract and engage them. How? With other children. Take our Rosary, for example: Children lead the prayers and explain the mysteries, then they hear Scripture verse by verse, a bit at a time. Children’s voices attract and engage their imaginations.

Kerri: Ken’s a convert, and I’m a revert. We’ve found the Catholic faith is a joy, and it excites the imaginations of children when you fill them with bits and bites of Scripture, with the stories of the faith lived out. That’s how you live the faith in your house. It’s a joyful thing to live the faith in your family.

Ken: Parents email and call that their children want to speak about the Bible a lot or their son wants to pray the Stations of the Cross every day in Lent. They ask us, “Is this normal?”

Think about it: That’s exactly what children in the secular culture are doing — but with football or all the songs from Frozen. Kids repeat them again and again, and no one finds that strange. We need to replace what is in the forefront of our children’s imaginations with the faith.

What do “Glory Stories” teach children?

Kerri: They are about saints; what they said; their actual words; what they did in real-life circumstances. They teach how to live the faith. Moms tell us their children listen over and over, then walk around quoting them all the time. We hear that learning-disabled and autistic children do this, too!

 

What’s a typical example you hear from a parent?

Ken: A mother emailed that her son was hurt playing in the backyard. Bleeding from the mouth, teeth injured, he had to be taken to the emergency room. His mother heard him muttering something while sobbing in the car seat behind her. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” he kept repeating. She recognized that as the Bible verse stressed in our Joan of Arc “Glory Story.” He understood how it applied to him in a time of great hurt. We hear that all the time: The children get the words of the saints and Scripture and apply it to themselves, their lives.

Instead of imagining, “What Disney princess am I?” — that’s our secular mythology, right? — real-life saints’ stories are the ones to have your children ponder.

 

How does Holy Heroes help children and parents any time of year?

Kerri: If you want to pray a Rosary, but you’re exhausted, or you’re in the car and the kids are going crazy, put in our Rosary CD. It’s an easy and beautiful way to pray together. The faith comes through people’s families. A weekly class at the parish is not going to instill the faith, especially in the culture today. It has to be in your home, so it becomes second nature.

 

What are some of the other materials you have?

Ken: We also have weekly “Mass prep” materials on HolyHeroesFun.com to help everyone get ready for Mass. Coloring pages, a Gospel video, a quiz you can take to Mass — all sorts of things to help children understand the Liturgy of the Word.

Kerri: We have several DVDs, such as our Jesse Tree DVD for Advent, and our Inside the Sacraments DVD on the Eucharist, which takes you back in time and into the Bible to show how God’s revelation built up to the Eucharist.

 

Your children appear in the Holy Heroes products. How else are they part of this apostolate?

Kerri: Our kids do the videos, some audio and even write. The children come up with things by themselves.

Ken: There’s so much power in children teaching children. The kids take a script and inject their personalities into it. Of course, we make sure things are theologically accurate. We have our scripts reviewed by Father Juan Diego Brunetta (a Dominican, New York Archdiocese tribunal judge and former director of Catholic Information Services).

Kerri: Ken has a graduate degree in theology, as well.

 

What are some of the children’s favorites?

Kerri: We get tons of positive feedback on the Stations of the Cross CD. People really gravitate toward that. The “Glory Stories,” the stories of the saints, are also huge for kids. To hear about their lives — I wish I had this when I was a kid!

Ken: The Stations of the Cross and a companion coloring book is by far and away the bestselling audio CD. Parishes and schools want it for their kids. We even turned it into a bilingual prayer book, which parishes have purchased in large quantities.

Kerri: If you have a bunch of little kids, you know how hard it is to take them to the Stations of the Cross in church on a Friday night at the end of a hard week. Even with older kids, it’s hard. It’s important to take them to church, but not feasible for families all the time. I realized that praying the Stations of the Cross at home was a beautiful benefit for families with small children.

 

What are some highlights of the saints’ stories?

Ken: Pope [Emeritus] Benedict made a comment that you need to make friends with the saints; you find best friends among the saints. You can go to HolyHeroesFree.com to get the “Glory Stories: Vol. 1” CD free. The CD includes two stories. First, “St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Hear the actual conversations between Juan Diego and Our Lady. The other story is “Blessed Imelda,” patroness of first communicants. We explain the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and why you can believe it — all in the story of her miraculous first Communion.

Kerri: You come to realize holiness is actually possible with every child. That’s what we’re trying to do.

 

Any other ways parents can use the stories to teach their children the faith?

Kerri: Too tired to read a story? Listen to a “Glory Story.”

Ken: We heard they make great bedtime stories or naptime “calmers.” A mom emailed that her children wanted to listen to “Blessed Imelda” over and over again in bed. One night her 7-year-old daughter came downstairs and said, “Mom, we need to go to daily Mass more often.” They “get” the story and what it should mean for their lives.

Joseph Pronechen is a

Register staff writer.