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The United Kingdom

Below are responses to Totus2us podcasts given by Brits with Christian names between Mark & Maureen - many thanks to you all       ♥

Mark      

"I have my utmost trust in Mary and I am honoured in the sense that she is by my side. And I will continue to pray for her to intercede for us and take my prayers to the Lord and be that person to me that I can talk to and put my trust in, as I would my own mother. And she is my mother but most significantly she is our mother."

Mark      

"Mary is my mother, my sister and my friend."

In Man for Others, Mark talks about his vocation to the priesthood     

"The message of the Gospel is that God loved us so much that He came in Christ to reconcile us to Him. So I think that my vocation to the priesthood is about sharing the immense love that God has for us in coming among us as Jesus Christ. I think that what the priesthood has to offer the world is Jesus and that's what the world needs to hear. And of course we receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, and in my life the Eucharist has been the centre and the foundation of whom I am as a Christian and hopefully who I will be as a priest."

Mark chose Bl Charles de Foucauld on The Incredibles      

"Blessed Charles de Foucauld was born in Paris and was the son of a Count. Very early in his life he lost his faith and he led up until he was about 26 a fairly wild life; he had mistresses, and drinking, and he was a soldier, and he'd completely rejected the idea God existed. Anyway he had a great crisis in the middle of his twenties and he said very profoundly 'The moment I realised that God exists, I realised I had to give my life to him.' .. So he became a religious and he moved to the middle of the Sahara desert, to the middle of an Islamic tribe, and he set up a church. And in the middle of this tribe he planted the Blessed Sacrament, he planted Jesus Christ Himself, and he allowed the presence of the Eucharist to change his life and to change the lives of those around him. He allowed the simple presence of Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity, to transform his heart."

Mark      

"Mary is my mother. She is somebody for whom I feel a great devotion and love. I especially think of her mantle of protection being over me at all times and over those whom I love. She's a central part of my faith because she brings me closer to her son Jesus and I feel connected with the love that they all have for everybody. So I am eternally grateful to Our Lord for calling me into the Catholic Church and giving me Mary as my mother."

Mark       

"My feelings about Our Lady are that she's someone you can pray to and when I'm praying I just get the feeling that there's a feminine presence guiding me and caring for me."

Mark      

"No other disciple followed Jesus so closely or more perfectly than Mary did."

Mark       

"Mary to me is my mother. She's also the most powerful of intercessors. Every morning, I go through the names of all of my family, praying to Mary, asking her to lift them up to the Lord for me."

Mark      

"The midnight Mass is the main focus for me - it's the silence, the peace of it, and the carol singing - it brings families together during Christmas and people who wouldn't normally go to Church, come back to Church and hopefully find something extra special during the Feast of Christmas."

Mark      

"I found myself not being afraid to have a tear in my eye - it wasn't through hurt of things but because I felt love. I felt that I was being loved.  I picture Mary with such a gentle smile."

Martha      

"I have been overwhelmed in many ways and very conscious of the graces that I have received just in the last few days while being here at the Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow. I see how much Mary is so much a part of Divine Mercy her Son, and how we get so close to Him through her. I think coming from a parish which is dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour and whose medal I have been wearing round my neck for a number of months now must surely feature in the fact that I softened my hard shell and took the opportunity when it came to be here. It is a very personal experience coming here and I'm sure for everyone it's similar in many ways but different in so many other ways, because it does touch one to the heart and all through oneself."

Martha      

"For me Christmas is a time to spend with my family but spiritually it means a lot more: that Christmas is the time that my Saviour was born. And without Christmas, I wouldn't have Jesus and I wouldn't be who I am today, because I am where I am because of him. So Christmas is time for new beginnings for me, it is basically the beginning of my faith."

Martha chose Psalm 23 as her Word on the Street      

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. - "I absolutely love it because when you really look at the words it's really relevant to our everyday life because the Lord is our shepherd and He takes us through valleys of death but He takes us through them, we don't sit in them, we walk straight through them, He walks by our side, and his rod and his staff are there to comfort us throughout everything we go through. And the Bible is absolutely amazing and I recommend everyone to try it out - the Bible isn't only just something to read and let it sit there, but you've got to take it into action and apply it to your life. The Bible is also God's way of talking to us, it's God's promise, God speaks to us through the Bible and God is the one person who will never lie, and He always keeps His promises and He promises a lot in the Bible, so I recommend you all check it out."

Martin      

"I am falling in love with Mary and I'm having a love affair with her and I think she's fast becoming my best friend in heaven, beyond of course Our Lord. And actually through her I'm discovering who he is and she's carrying all my prayers to him and him to the Father. She's become the most approachable way I can actually connect through to God. This is something that has been delightful because I wasn't naturally brought up with it although I'm cradle Catholic and discovering new worlds of love and tenderness and delight."

Martin      

"Our Lady is to me most definitely my mother and my son's mother, in heaven."

Martin       

"In every way Mary is someone who inspires love - that certainly has been my experience."

St Louis de Montfort is Martin's Man for Others      

"I think he's so relevant now because for one his theology, particularly his theology of Our Lady and how she leads us to God, is worth exploring much more; but his radical commitment in a time of relativism I think becomes even more inspiring and interesting and becomes a real witness for being able to commit oneself in complete confidence and trust to God and to God's will, without fear."

Father Martin      

"Mary for me is the one chosen by God, the one closest to Jesus, the one who takes my prayers to Him."

Father Martin on Man for Others      

"Father Maurice lived in France in the 19th century and I've just finished reading the extraordinary correspondence he had with St Theresa of Lisieux. He was struggling both as a priest and as a Christian. He opened his heart to the Little Flower and she told him "Confidence, nothing but confidence leads us to God's love." She also gave him great courage by saying 'When we are in heaven, we shall share in the infinite mercy of the Lord.'"

Father Martin recalls the days leading up to the election of Benedict XVI       

"If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ!" - BXVI at his Inauguration Mass.

Father Martin Pratt is a priest of the archdiocese of Birmingham

Martina      

"Our Lady is everything for me because she’s done so much for me when I've needed her so much."

Mary      

"Our Lady for me is like a secret that is difficult to talk about but if I was to describe who she is for me I'd say she is the place where I live. She's a mantle. She has this mantle and I can live under it. And when I say 'live' I mean that's where I breathe and find rest and peace and strength, consolation, refuge. And 'live' also means I know that's where and how I receive the life of Christ, that she's really this mediatrix and that any life of faith and grace that I'm living, and all the joy I have in my heart for living in that faith, somehow comes through her. I receive it under this mantle and her presence is always there and I'm always deeply thankful for it."

Mary      

"Our Blessed Lady keeps us going, Our Lady helps keeps us going, keeps us on our feet at all times. So without her we wouldn't be able to go anywhere, would we? Strong!"

Mary      

"I just love Our Lady to bits and she’s my friend really as well. And I’d just be totally lost without her. I just know many times that I've been in kind of situations that have not been good and it's always been Our Lady that has helped me back out and given me that dignity and that purpose and that worth in life. And I just praise God for Our Lady because she is the Mother of the Church and I just praise her for that."

Mary was a pilgrim to Nazareth in the Holy Land      

"I had the experience to see Our Lady's house where she lived on earth - it was so beautiful, I can't explain it. It was such a holy, holy place. To actually see the place where Our Lady experienced the Incarnation, the Angel Gabriel, it's just amazing, it was just so holy there I was emotionally crying with it, it's so beautiful."

Mary      

"Mary to me my Mother is love. She is the greatest love you can ever feel for your children, she feels for you because you're her child. That same love, it's amazing. When I think that this same with which she loved her son, Jesus Christ, she loves us. It's awesome to me. It makes me weep and I love her so much."

Mary      

"I love Our Lady so much because she's just a mother to me and she always has been, and I know without Our Lady I'd be lost."

Mary       

"I feel very, very privileged to have the same name as Mary our mother, and it makes me feel safe really, and very happy having the same name as her. And when I think of Mary I feel very calm and peaceful, and when there's a lot of chaos around, I just need to think of her and I feel rested."

Mary      

"I've often felt very close to Our Lady. I can feel her presence and when I’ve been through very difficult times in my life I’ve felt almost a tangible presence of her."

Mary      

"It was really through Fr George Tutto, who celebrates 60 years as a priest this week-end, and because of his holiness and his spiritual integrity, he said to us at the prayer group he used to run, 'Our Lady is appearing in Yugoslavia' and from that moment I really believed it. Because of who Fr Tutto was - he's a wonderful canon lawyer with great intellect but more than that great holiness. Today is 25 June 2011. This is a very special day because 30 years ago today Our Blessed Lady appeared to 6 young teenagers in a little hamlet in the former Yugoslavia called Medjugorje; the name means 'between the hills'. They first saw her on the 24th June but they were so scared they ran off. They were told by their parents to go back at the same the next day which they did. And Our Lady appeared to them again and her message was very simple. She said, "I am the Blessed Virgin Mary and I have come to tell you that God exists." "

Mary      

"I thank you Mary, I thank you Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is our patron for our prolife group, I thank you for everything you have done for me in my life, and I ask you to bless the prolife work and bless especially all mothers and young women who are growing up. Thank you, Mary. Amen."

Mary      

"Mary is my mother. I call her Mama Mary. I love her with all my heart and I pray to her frequently, and she never lets go of my hand. Praise God!"

Mary       

"For me Mary is just the most kind and precious person."

Mary      

"Mary is the Mother of God."

Mother Mary of St Joseph ocd      

"My favourite title of Our Lady is her Greek title Theotokos, the God bearer. To me is the woman who was able to bear such close encounter with God, she is the one who leads us close to God. Therefore she's our model of prayer, our model of the interior of life, the one who was able to remain so close to God she actually bore direct encounter with God."

M Mary of St Joseph reflects on the spirituality of the Carmelites In the Family    

"Today we experience the Church under attack in many different ways, suffering in many different ways, attacked from outside, suffering scandal and dissension from within, and we can easily resonate with Teresa's words when she said "The world is on fire. Don't let any more harm come to your Church, Lord." So today the Carmelites still desire to offer their lives in prayer for the Church, for all of humanity. Prayer understood as a relationship with God, we're invited, called by God, to a relationship of deep intimacy with him, to the point of coming to recognise our oneness with Him. We trust that by opening ourselves, opening our hearts fully to the love that God desires to bestow on everyone, to pour out on the whole world, that we can be channels of His love to others by receiving it as fully as we can ourselves."

Mother Mary of St Joseph is in the Carmel at Notting Hill in London. She is the author of Upon This Mountain on prayer in the Carmelite tradition.

Sister Mary of St Philip ocd      

"I had a very good Catholic education and I learnt at school all about the doctrines concerning Our Lady and, although I believed and understood them, it made her feel very remote. I couldn't engage with her until after I had been in Carmel 2 or 3 years, one day something clicked: she is my mother not as a mother to a little child, but a mother to an unborn child. I couldn't relate to her because we were distant but because we were too close. Once I understood that I just relaxed and rested and let my mother do the rest."

Sister Mary of St Philip is in the Carmel at Notting Hill in London. She and her sisters gave their somethings about Mary during a Novena to St Therese of the Child Jesus.

Maryanna      

"Our Lady is our mother. She likes loves everyone."

Mary-Anne      

"Our Blessed Mother has taught me so much in my life: the importance of daily prayer, that we are made for holiness and that we need very few things materially in this life."

Mary-Anne, with her husband Callum, founded Craig Lodge (in Dalmally), a house of prayer in the Highlands.

Mary-Anne      

"I know that Our Lady is always there with me and I love her so much."

Sister Mary Magdalen      

"Our Lady is my mother and I chose her as my mother when I was 17 and since that time she has guided all of my life. I try to consecrate everything to her and she has led me in very many wonderful and mysterious ways, in a way that my life has turned out that I could never have imagined. And it's really thanks to her at every moment of my life. She's the one who showed me Jesus, she taught me to pray and she's leading me to heaven every day."

Sister Mary Magdalen is in the community of the Sisters of Mary Morning Star.

Mary Magdalen      

"Our Lady means the whole world to me."

Mary-Therese       

"Mary is the Mother of God and she is the Queen of the whole world, Queen of Hearts, Mother of Peace and Mother of wonderful help."

Matt      

"I'm a convert and 3 years ago Christmas meant something very different to me. Christmas meant gifts, it meant taking annual leave and leaving work early .. Christmas now is about making time .. to think about what Christmas means in terms of the birth of Christ, what God, Jesus, really came into our lives for, which is really mind-blowing."

Matt      

"Mary for me is my mother, she's my guardian, my guide. I pray to her every day, I ask for her intercession and her protection in my life."

Matthew      

"I think of Mary every time I pray because she's the mother of Jesus."

Matthew      

"For me on this trip to Medjugorje I saw that peace that I could have and I realised that forgiveness is really for me the way that I can at last finally open my heart to God, to have no reservations, no boundaries or inhibitions for Him. If I'm closed off, if I can't forgive my brother or sister, how can God enter that bit. So I did! .. Ever since, peace at last has been upon me."

Matthew      

"Mary is a mother who is always there, keeping me safe in uni, helping me out whenever things get tough, and a great help in terms of purity as well."

Matthew's response about the Sacrament of Reconciliation - Go in Peace      

"What I’d emphasise about confession is really the freedom that it gives us. Sometimes a feeling of peace, sometimes no feelings, but it’s just that knowledge that those things that we struggle with all the time are never too big for God, they are never a lasting obstacle between us and Him. But the obstacles that we put in place, we need to remove, those hurdles or for those bigger sins, the walls that we build between us and Him and the shadow they create onto us. And confession just gives us the chance to knock down that wall and to say ‘God, I want to be back with you, face to face, with no obstacles in between us.’ So really I’d emphasise the love that God has for us, the peace that that gives us and the freedom to live as children of God."

Matthew's chosen quote from the Bible on Word on the Street      

Philippians 4, 13: I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me

"I find this such a brilliant phrase because it's so applicable to every day life, I can be going about my daily tasks and remind myself of this line and instantly Christ is brought back into my life and I'm with him again, even in the basic things of normal life."

Matthew      

"When you discover the Eucharist and you experience this silent stillness, this simple piece of bread that flows from it all the fruits, the love, joy, peace, you experience from, in your heart you are receiving Jesus. When you receive this Eucharist you realise that all these things and worries of the world and your desires for selfish needs are just only for the self, but that which goes beyond the end is heaven, and in order to obtain eternal life we need to understand and come to live this now, which comes from the Eucharist. To me the Eucharist is everything."

Matthew       

"Our Lady is, for me anyway, a refuge and an eternal heavenly mother that we can go to in terms of need but also in terms of joy too, for gratitude, for her intercession. It is that sort of warmth and I suppose I feel a lack of judgment in Our Lady, that she just provides comfort and love at times of need."

Maureen      

"The Blessed Mother is a great help to me each and every day."

Maureen      

"Thank you again to Our Lady … she does always help me."