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The United Kingdom

Responses to Totus2us podcasts given by Brits with Christian names beginning with O, P & Q - many thanks to you all     ♥

Oliver      

"Because of her yes, we have Jesus, and Mary is the first disciple and that's why we honour her. She's our mother too and that's a great consolation. At the foot of the Cross, Jesus, after giving us everything that he could have given, he gave us his mother and so we always need to take great consolation in that: that's she's always there, praying for us and wanting to support us there and, as Pope Francis says, to wrap us in her holy mantle and to guide us to Jesus, because she had a front row seat. She raised Jesus and as a result she's the perfect mother and so we must never be afraid to turn to her."

Oliver's response on the Eucharist - In Memory of Me      

"The Eucharist really helps to bring the reality of the Christian life to everything that one does, which is why St John Paul Ii called it the source and summit of the Christian life. Also in adoration as well - that deep desire of the Lord to spend some time with us, to form us. As Fulton Sheen said 'It's like spending time in the sun: we don't know what happens to us but we do change.' So, it's that continual visiting him, being united with him in Holy Communion and also, when we've fallen, to be reconciled to him, for him to lavish us with his mercy again through the Sacrament of reconciliation. But, above all in the Eucharist, it's all about God wanting to be with us. That's why it's the supreme joy that any Christian who really seeks Him, above all else seeks to learn about their faith and live their faith, it's the greatest gift God could ever have given us and it's something that we really need to rediscover and cherish as the greatest treasure we've been given this side of heaven."

Oliver      

"For me Our Lady is a wonderful inspiration. She was very close to my mother, who was an extraordinary woman and who inspired me to keep to the faith during all those difficult years of growing up. And when my mother died, I took on Our Lady as, in a sense, my second mother and I talk to her every day, and I find her wonderfully pure and simple nature to be an inspiration."

Oliver      

"Mary for me is Jesus’ shepherd. She brings together broken hearts, hearts that were brought up without a father and brings them and shepherds them towards her son, Jesus."

Oliver      

"I associate Our Lady very much with her apparition to Saint Bernadette in Lourdes."

Olivia       

"Our Lady is the reason that I am a Christian because, when I was at university, I went to a pilgrimage place called Medjugorje where it was said that she was appearing to some children. As soon as I got there, I found I believed it. I felt her presence and ever since then she has pointed the way to her son, Jesus. I would say really that my relationship now is focused on her son. I feel really very blessed that I have friends that took me to that place, because it changed everything. I am very, very thankful to her because I don't really feel I know her that well but I do feel that she has helped me to know her son."

Olivia      

"Mary to me is a source of strength and beauty, and every time I've needed her she has been there for me and given me so much strength and warmth and love, and I just think she is beautiful."

Olivia      

"What Mary Mother means to me is that she’s an interceder and a loving mother. She's more a mother than a queen."

Paddy      

"My favourite saint is St Benedict and part of the reason for that is that I grew up with a Benedictine spirituality right from a very early age, as did my wife, and as a result of that we have read and studied the Rule of St Benedict many times over. One of the key phrases that come out of the Rule is that it is about being a school of the Lord’s service and a lot of what’s in there is applicable just as much to married life and the family as it is to monks and the monastery."

Paschal      

"I was staying with a community in Rome and one of their mottos was 'Through Jesus to Mary and through Mary, more deeply and fully to Our Lord Jesus.' And I prayed to Our Lady, asking her to reveal to me more who she was in my life. As I was thinking about it, I reflected on Mary being a companion, somebody who, every day when I pray the rosary, journeys with me more fully into the mysteries of the Gospel and in who she is, showing me what I'm called to be: somebody whose soul and life magnifies the Lord."

Paschal speaks about the Eucharist - In Memory of Me      

"Pope Benedict said the Eucharist is the proof of God's love. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said that when you really love somebody you might write them a letter or better than that you might speak to them on the phone, but love's deepest desire is for union and, in the Eucharist, there is partly our desire to be with God but more than that it's God's passionate desire to be with us. It's the proof of his love."

Patricia      

"Mary is my mother, the mother of God, our Saviour, Lord Jesus of Nazareth."

Patricia      

"Our Lady to me is the Mother of God but she's everybody's mother as well, so I would feel close to her just talking to her every day."

Sister Patricia of the Heart of Mary ocd      

"Our Lady means to me something very beautiful. A beautiful person, beautiful to look at, beautiful personality, somebody who is very loving and accepting, and who's also protective and will help, help us in any way whatever. When I was a novice, my novice mistress used to say to me 'If you need reminding, go to your guardian angel, but remember he'll only remind you once.' And I used to think 'No, I'm going to Our Lady because she's a mother and she'll keep on reminding you.'"

Sister Patricia of the Heart of Mary is in the Carmel at Notting Hill in London. The sisters all wonderfully & v lovingly gave their something about Mary during Totus2us's Novena to St Therese of the Child Jesus in 2010.

Sister Patricia of the Presentation ocd       

"What does Mary mean to me? She is Our Lord's mother and I love her to bits."

Sister Patricia of the Presentation is in the Carmel at Notting Hill in London. The sisters all wonderfully & v lovingly gave their something about Mary during Totus2us's Novena to St Therese of the Child Jesus in 2010.

Father Patrick      

"Because I never knew my mother, I’ve always taken Mother Mary to be my mother and I always turn to her in times of joy, in times of sorrow, in times of suffering, in times of need, I always turn to her. One way or another she's always there, she never lets me down. She may not answer my prayer in the way I would prefer but I leave it to her. She knows best because she's the Seat of Wisdom. She knows everything that is best for her children."

Patrick      

"Mary is the epitome of compassion and love, and she’s always looking out for everyone. And I'm new to having a family and I pray to her to look after my family."

Patrick      

"We all prayed very fervently to Our Lady of Lourdes and miraculously he was cured … I sincerely believe that it was thanks to the intercession of Our Lady that he is now healthy and happy."

Patrick      

"We talk about the Church as being a foretaste of heaven and to know that our entire faith is centred around Jesus here on earth as it will be in heaven is just such a wonderful thing, especially in the way so many youth organisations will literally center around the Eucharist. You can really get the sense of a preempting, a pretaste of what heaven will be like: all faces turned towards Jesus, everyone worshipping and praising Him. The peace and joy that descends out of such sessions! No-one comes out of adoration feeling awful, they've always found a measure of peace and happiness, which is just that continuous promise of what we are actually going to achieve when we get to heaven with Jesus."

Patrick      

"The Bible says that Mary was highly blessed and highly favoured."

Patrick      

"The thing that always strikes me about the Hail Mary - the first part is authentic biblical text from what Elizabeth says; the second half I think should be shouted because I think it's such a sensational thing to say ..Mother of God."

Patrick       

"When I think about Our Lady I just think, in the universal context, of every single mother on earth, not just contemporary times but throughout history, and I think of the love and nurture that they bring through the babies. And then I think obviously to Our Lady, the Blessed Mary, bringing Jesus through his life."

Patrick       

"Mother Mary has always been there for me, she is part of the holy family of Christ, an integral part, and I draw a lot of inspiration from her."

Patti      

"When I think of Our Lady I think of her as a model of perfect trust in God. If the original sin was the sin of wanting to know good and evil and wanting to be like God and if Mary was conceived, as we are taught, without the stain of original sin, then she doesn't suffer from that obsessive human desire to know what's going to happen next. Therefore she can accept the extraordinary things that happen, the painful things that happen, with what seems to us to be super-human calm. She keeps all these things, as scripture tells us, and ponders them in her heart. Because of her trust in God, she knows that God has a plan and that God's will will be done."

Paul      

"I think Our Lady is perfectly summarised in Luke’s Gospel and the key to the whole of her Magnificat, the fourth line, where she says "Henceforth all generations will call me blessed." And with that comes our commitment to Mary: that if we give her true reverence, being the Mother of God, it opens the doors to our relationship with God. It's something quite remarkable really because through this she becomes our mother on earth and in the world to come, in heaven, where we will have eternity, where all praise, all worship, all adoration will be to God. And really preparation for that comes with our earthly life and following Our Lady's example. So the key is the Magnificat, following Our Lady's example and learning to live through that total confidence in God.  And I always think that when you read the Magnificat, you can imagine Our Lady being very joyous in what she's saying and that's really what we need in our lives. We need joy and through that joy we come to a deeper understanding of her, and by understanding her and how she lived her earthly life that brings us closer to God."

Paul       

"During my time in Rome as a young Catholic I got to spend a lot of time witnessing and seeing the heart of our Church, and at the very heart of our Church, the leader of our Church, our Holy Father Pope Benedict. For me as a young Catholic, to see him, to see this pillar of faith, of hope and of love, he really inspired in me the confidence to really step out into the deep, to give everything for Our Lord."

Paul      

"It was a time of discovering who Mary is for me in my life at this time because sometimes my relationship with Mary takes a back seat. I found through the 3 days I was there to really enjoy a love for Mary again, to discover the rosary in more depth, to understand her ideas for the world and what her example can be for me today and for the rest of humanity."

Paul      

"Mary means a very simple thing to me and that's mother."

Paul      

"I regard Our Lady as my mother and my protector."

Paul      

"Mary for me would be an ideal figure for womanhood."

Paula      

"Our Lady plays like a very special role, not just in our lives but in the Church."

Paula speaks about the Eucharist - In Memory of Me      

"I found my faith again through Scripture, but this really became alive when I went to Church one day. And it’s not that Mass made sense or that I was overwhelmed by the people or the candles or the music. It's just that I went in and I just felt God present in the Eucharist."

Penelope      

"Something that I like as a English British Catholic is that we seem to have a particular devotion: England is Mary's dowry, and we say a Hail Mary in Mass after the bidding prayers .. So it adds a certain specialness to the fact of being British and Catholic and the place of Our Lady in our lives."

Perpetua      

"I have a great devotion to the rosary."

Peter      

"To me Our Lady is, of course, she's my mother. She's my model of all that I try to be (and often fail). She's my model of humility, she's a model of chastity, of poverty and of acceptance to God's divine will. So for me she really is my everything in my journey to Jesus and I don't think I could find Jesus without our Blessed Mother."

Peter      

"I've always known that I have a father and I'm beginning to realise that I also have a mother. That's touching me because it's a relationship that I really understand and I really get, and I'm starting to feel quite close to my heavenly mother and that is actually really moving me because it's a relationship that I find easy to come to, I find it easy to come to my mother. I think as well what I'm beginning to understand is that she in some sense represents me and my Christian brothers and sisters, in a sense she goes before me. Because she is sinless and because she is perfect, she goes where I hope to go one day and she is where I hope to go, and that gives me a lot of hope as a Christian."

Peter      

"When I think of the Eucharist my heart just overflows with thanksgiving. Here in our midst, for all time, Jesus Christ is truly present to us. As present as he was to the apostles, to the people he healed and I am just so grateful that, whatever happens in my life, however well or however badly things go, I have the joy and the peace of knowing that I will be able to go and kneel before Him in the Blessed Sacrament, and whether I feel anything, whether I experience profound conversion, or whether I don't, in that simple act of kneeling there in the Church, I can know by faith that Jesus Christ is as near to me as He can be in this life."

Peter       

"Our Lady is very comforting to me; she helps me to pray."

Peter      

"My experience of World Youth Day has been fantastic and it has been inspiring to see so many young Catholics in one place. Maybe the best part was being on the trains - just living with the atmosphere, everyone singing songs together and everyone united."

Peter      

"Our Lady is very important to me in my life. She is to me the ultimate symbol of acceptance of God's will and having the courage to follow God's will. She must have been so frightened in her life when God asked her to carry Jesus in her womb, and also throughout her son Christ's life, and at the foot of the Cross when he was dying. She must have been so courageous because she didn't know the plan but she believed and accepted God's will. If I can pray for that in my life, a day at a time, then I believe I can find peace through Our Lady. Amen."

Peter      

"I discovered out of pure logic Jesus had to have a human mother and that human mother had to be so special, so unique, so wonderful; and that was Mary, Holy Mary, Mother of God."

Peter Hutley has been producing plays on the Life of Jesus since the early 1990s. Here's his TOP CHAT      

"It's not difficult although you do need to pray about it .. above all you need to be fired up in your heart that you want to spread the Gospel, and then it just follows. I can make my script available - I can tell you that it's being performed this summer in the State Penitentiary of Alabama, it's being performed in Uganda, and I'm seeing a group next week who want to perform it in Ghana. Once you get going it's infectious.. and it gathers momentum because Jesus is behind it. That is the great advantage: when you are portraying His life, He is there."

For more about the Wintershall plays (the Nativity Play, the Passion of Jesus, the Life of Christ, and the Acts of the Apostles - performed in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, & Trafalgar Square London, and also around the world, particularly in prisons), visit the Wintershall website.

Peter      

"Saying the family rosary, things just go sweet! As soon as you take Our Lady out of the equation and the mysteries and all of that and you think that you can just do it on your own strength, in our family it comes apart, no question, every time."

Father Peter Walters      

"I have a particular devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham and I think of her as the home maker. I think that when Our Lord was a child he was very much as he was when he was an adult, and as a child I think he would have gone out into the streets of Nazareth, befriending the hungry and the homeless, the lonely and the sad. And what would he have done with them? He'd have brought them home to his Mum. And Our Lady wouldn't have known from one moment to the next who on earth her divine Son was going to bring home. But we may be sure that all of his friends found a welcome in her house. And I'm sure she did that when she later kept house for St John and the apostles came home from their missionary journeys with tales of triumph and disaster and they would have found that maternal welcome waiting for them there. And in Walsingham today Our Lady continues to extend that ministry of love and welcome."

Father Peter had a TOP CHAT (in September 2017) about his apostolate in Colombia with street-children and the work of the charity Let the Children Live     

"The story really starts back in 1982 when I was a student and I was interested in South America and I saw a cut price deal on an air fare to Colombia and I thought 'Great. I'll go there." And I went over there on holiday and that was when things started to happen. I got stuck over there because I had a problem with my ticket and I couldn't come back when I wanted to. I could only afford to eat once every two days and one day when I wasn't eating I bumped into a group of children who were begging in the street. Once they realised that I hadn't got any money when they asked me for money and that I was hungrier than they were, they decided to adopt me and they shared their food with me and looked after me. Their kindness, their humanity, moved me enormously. ... For me the encounter with the children was actually a very spiritual thing because I felt that somehow through them God was reaching out to look out for me where I was thousands of miles away from home. I'd got myself into a silly mess, it was all my own fault, and yet I wasn't alone, and yet God was caring for me through these children. And it made me think 'Why wasn't anyone doing anything to help these children?'"

Peter      

"For me Mary is above all a mother .. There's still a hidden dimension to my relationship with Our Lady, with my mother in that her presence is something there but it is a presence that leads me somewhere else. It's hard to describe quite where she leads me but one place where Our Lady leads me is into prayer, and I've certainly experienced how praying the rosary has led me into deeper forms of prayer, and that has led into an incredible preciousness in life that you can't describe."

Peter      

"Mary is just an amazing way to come to Christ and to feel that love which she had for Christ and that she has for us as our mother."

Peter       

"My experience of World Youth Day Madrid has just been an absolutely incredible week of Christian and Catholic love and life and liveliness, and just seeing and meeting so many young people. ..This has showed me just how true and how real the Catholic faith is."

Peter      

"My wife is Martha and we’re both Catholics and we’re devoted to Our Lady. We pray to her for her help and we receive it and we are thankful."

Phil      

"I have 3 mothers; I have my Mum, my biological mum; I have my spiritual mother the Church and I have my other great mighty, spiritual mother Mary in heaven, and I find myself praying to her every day. I pray the 7 sorrows devotion and I know that she always hears my prayers. She's a very, very powerful intercessor. So, I love you Mary. Amen."

Go in Peace      

"I feel a lot of resistance going to confession but I make myself go anyway, go regularly, because I know that God wants me to go, and He's kind of breaking me and molding me. I kind of get caked up and clogged up, but going to confession I will become loosened and supple spiritually again …
His grace will mend me and keep me going, because it's really important."

Phil      

"Mary is very close to my heart."

For Word on the Street, Phil chose Matthew 16:18      
I shall call you Peter and you are the rock on which I shall build the Church
- "It reflects the redeeming love, the grace that God gives mankind and it reflects His faith in our humanity."

Phil      

"Confession I never find easy to do, it’s never easy to face up to your faults and wrongdoings but I always find that coming out of confession, after being absolved of my sins, I feel a closeness with God that's unmatched to any other time. It's at that point when I'm reconciled with God and I know that He knows that I'm sorry for what I've done, and I feel renewed and strengthened to be more like Christ in everything that I do."

Phil      

"Mary is the one who loves unconditionally because she is the one who schooled Our Lord. As Pope Benedict always used to say, 'We must learn at the school of Mary' - which means that if we're going to understand love, as Jesus teaches it to us and as Jesus personifies it to us, then we can do no better than to just look to Mary who teaches us to know what love is and who love is, because she it the one who shares in the love that is Jesus Christ."

Philip      

"Our Lady is our Mum."

Philip      

"Being asked what Mary means for me felt somewhat strange at first as I'd never really stopped to think about it. It's not a question I'd ever been asked; perhaps I should have thought about it? But for me it's not something I felt the need to ponder over. Being asked what she means for you is almost like being asked what my mother or father or best friend means to me. It's one of those things that, like breathing, is part of my every day life. And as a Catholic Christian it's part of my life of prayer and part of my relationship with the Lord."

Philip      

"For me, home is where your heart is and the Eucharist is my home. When I discerned my vocation to go to seminary, daily Mass was so important and eventually I found a church offering exposition of the Blessed Sacrament all afternoon. It felt natural to be there. I could just tell Jesus everything and sit in silence and let His presence fill me with peace. He's now my best friend and this makes Him the source of my greatest joys and frustrations. I find trying to understand him is more difficult than my philosophy class and at others I just know a peace that the world can't give. He's now at my centre. Going to Him there is no longer an option, it's my life. Whether joyful or frustrated, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. He's my home."

Philip      

"Mary for me is, well, my mother in heaven."

Philip      

"Mary is very, very close to me and I love her very much. I think she’s one of the greatest helps I’ve ever had."

Father Philip       

Father Philip Conner, the diocesan youth chaplain for the diocese of Lancaster, chose JPII as his Man for Others:

"John Paul II really, really inspired me at World Youth Day in Rome and I suppose in my journey to be a priest, he helped me to understand how actually priesthood isn't just something we do for God, or that we've got to sacrifice my life for the Lord, it's a gift. When I came to understand it as a gift, it transformed everything; when you realise something is a gift, you learn how to receive and this changes your whole attitude. It's not something you do for God, it's something God is doing for you; He chose us; we didn't choose Him, He chose us and we respond. John Paul II helped me to understand how it's a real mystery we're entering into and a really amazing privilege to participate in Jesus' life today and to make His life present, and to continue to receive this as a gift."

Father Phillip      

Father Phillip Harris describes how God led him by small steps along his road to the priesthood:

"God works with all our unworthiness and through his wonderful grace can actually work and bring new life into the world, new hope into the world. So I thank God every day for the journey he's taken me through, the journey that I'm still on and which He's leading me on. I pray for all you who might listen to this podcast that you will have the trust in the Lord that He will guide your little steps towards Hiw own purpose, His own will in your life and His will for the life of the world too."

Father Philip      

"Lent is the time of repentance, of sorrow for sins. We turn to the Lord, but we turn to Mary, the Mother of Mercy, begging her prayers that we be released from our sins and may turn to Jesus her Son, for she is mother of us all."

Philippa      

"Mary is always there and it is always comforting and familiar when I pray to her."

Friar Philomeno James      

"I am a Marian Franciscan. We follow the rule of St Francis but we have a special, beautiful love of Our Lady. Normally in religious life you have three vows (poverty, chastity and obedience) but our first vow is to the Blessed Virgin. This is a radical consecration that was given to us by Maximilian Kolbe who died as an act of charity, a martyr for charity, in Auschwitz. He came up with this idea of this total self-giving consecration ... According to Maximilian Kolbe we must be the absolute property of the Blessed Virgin Mary because when you are absolute property you maintain nothing for yourself .. So this is our love for Our Lady. "

Phyllis      

"Our Lady is there, she’s there the whole time, and if ever you’re in need of anything and help, she’s there. You can pray to her."

Piers      

"St Dominic combined the spiritual with the intellectual, he brought that into the order that he founded [the Order of Preachers - Dominicans], so he and his followers were able to defend the faith at a time when there was the Albigensian heresy. It was a terrible heresy, some ways slightly similar to the culture of death today, but he managed through developing prayer and study, to defeat this great heresy."

Pippa       

"The Eucharist for me is everything .. The words in the Mass, 'Lord I am not worthy to receive you' I feel so strongly every time I say them. I feel so human and so unworthy to receive something so beautiful, but as soon as I go up to receive Him, all of those doubts and fears are completely wiped away and the Lord reassures me that this is a gift that He is sharing with His children and He loves us so much."

Pippa chose Psalm 139 for her Word on the Street      

Yahweh, you examine me and know me. You know when I sit, when I rise. You understand my thoughts from afar.. You created my inmost self, knit me together in my mother's womb.
"When I feel lost and when I don't know who I am and where I am going, it reassures me that the Lord knows me intricately and he loves every single part of me and he will lead me in the right direction."

Poppy       

"Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven - what does that mean? That means that she is our mother and she loves us. And she desires with her whole heart for us to be close to Jesus, and if we turn to her in prayer she can help us. And that to me is something that's tremendously wonderful and beautiful: God has given us this gift of his own mother to intercede for us, to help us, to be our mother. The Queen of Heaven can help us and intercede for us so that one day we can meet our Creator."