Totus Tuus - Totus 2us

Callum      

_{"Our Lady freely gave me the grace to love her very, very much.  Whenever I pray the rosary, which I love, or even think about her, I receive a beautiful inner peace, even in times of sadness or when discord is around."}

_{Callum, with his wife Mary-Ann, runs Craig Lodge, Dalmally, a house of prayer in the Highlands.}

Camilla      

_{"Mary represents a beacon of faith to me since I was a child."}

Carina      

_{"For me Mary is the perfect woman, she’s who I aspire to be, she’s unparalleled in beauty and purity and holiness, and she's the greatest bearer of Christ. She's who I wish to be in bearing Christ to others and in saying my own fiat, my own amen and alleluia, yes to God, in my life through the Holy Spirit, that God's work may be done through me for His glory and for the good of other people."}

Carl      

_{"With Mother Mary, it’s like having your loving, considerate, protective mother there. So when I think about walking into the kitchen she puts her arms around my side and I can see the concern and love on her face, that she would actually speak my case before I would get in any trouble, and she would stand up for me and look after me. And that's the way I feel it is with her being in front of Jesus and the Father, where I've done things wrong and I feel bad, that she would actually speak on my behalf."}

Carla      

_{"My devotion to Our Lady is that she is the Mother of God, she’s the Mother of Christ, and I just love the way she has nurtured and loved Christ, suffered for her son. She points to her son all the time and helps us to look for Christ in our daily life."}

Carlene      

_{"For me, Mary is champion of the world, like the utter containment of perfection in a woman. She’s like who you wanna be like, she’s like the queen, the mother .. and yet so humble. .. She’s the first one, the new Eve, the first to say yes to God and lead us to salvation."}

Carly      

_{"For the first time I completely abandoned myself to the Lord, which I hadn't been able to do before; I'd wanted to do but I didn't know how. And I discovered Christ in the Eucharist, I saw Him, I met Him, I felt Him. And all the anger and pain and bitterness completely disappeared from my heart and I was just filled with love and joy and peace. And I saw Christ, I encountered Christ in the Eucharist, and for the first time I became completely aware of His presence in the Eucharist, of His true presence, His concrete presence, He was there before me in the flesh and He was bringing me into life, He brought me into life and healed me completely."}

Carmel      

_{"I think Our Lady is always with us … and I just want to say how much I love her."}

Carol      

_{"Relatively recently I came to a deeper understanding of Our Lady. I was praying about a particular situation and I felt the Lord saying, 'Take my mother. She is embracing you at the foot of the Cross.' So, whenever life gets problematic, I feel her embrace at the foot of the Cross. Amen."}

Carol      

_{"Our Lady of Guadalupe is my very special version of Our Lady because she's pregnant. As I pray outside the abortion clinics, I have an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe always with us to show that the Blessed Mother was pregnant with her son Jesus and it's evident. The image is very miraculous at times and turns people's hearts."}

Carol      

_{"Mary for me has been somebody I've always gone down and asked to intercede for me in my troubled times … She's a mother that must have suffered many more times than what I have done and come out the other side and I have every faith that she continues to intercede for me and will for all mothers."}

Caroline      

_{"Mary is the Star of the New Evangelisation for us and we need to pray to her every day under this title, and also Queen of Angels and Queen of Apostles."}

Carolyn      

_{"When my daughter was very ill with a brain tumour, I had an email from somebody and, at the bottom, she closed the email by saying 'I pray that Mary will comfort you at the foot of the Cross.' And I do want to share that that has happened. I felt that Mary invited me to kneel with her and to look at her son and hear the resonating words that Gabriel spoke to her: "Your son will be great, of his kingdom there will be no end." (And you know the story of all that Gabriel said to her.) And I knelt with her looking up at her son who was very dead on the cross. And I thought 'What faith this woman has! What faith does she have to see with her human eyes her dead son but to hear something in another, in a spiritual way, 'Your son will be great, of his kingdom there will be no end.'"}

Carolyn      

_{"I’ve had to take somebody I know from my parish to have several exorcisms because she was possessed and I came to realise the immense power Our Lady has and the terror in which the devil holds her …And I think that's helped me realise her great importance in the Church."}

Catherine      

_{"One of the things that Our Lady has helped me to understand and that I cherish most about her life and her example is in thinking about how she accepted to become the mother of our Saviour, how she allowed the incarnation to come about within her. What a wonderful example she is to us now, of how we are to allow God's word to become incarnate in us, how she was the first woman to let God be fully alive on earth, invisible to others, and how she is the example to us now to carry on this work of the incarnation, and to help and to share in the whole work of allowing God to be fully alive in our midst on earth now."}

Catherine      

_{"Our Lady to me is a shining light in the dark times and she guides me when I need guidance."}

Catherine      

_{"When I think about Mary, I think about the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary. And I think about the first lines, 'My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.' And that for me is the calling for everybody, to bow down before Jesus. And Mary brings that to me and makes it real for me."}

Catherine      

_{"Mary is to me a role model and somebody that I would like to have a heart like hers. And she is a very inspiring person with her simplicity and her humility."}

Catherine      

_{"For me Our Lady is our mother, one who cares for us more than we can possibly know, but also our model, someone to imitate for her humility and her love, and the obedience with which she followed the Word of God and was Mother to Our Lord."}

Catherine      

_{"Our Lady is the arms that go around you when you need a hug; she's a passage to Jesus. Sometimes when I can't pray to God I can just think of Our Lady as my mother and I feel connected."}

Catherine      

_{"I think the thing I liked the most about Lourdes (I’d never been before and I didn’t really know what to expect) was, once I got there, I realised just how much of a holy place it was. You can really, really feel that and you can feel Our Lady’s presence and definiitely just overwhelmed by love."}

Catherine with her children Grace, John & Mary      

_{"When I think of Mary, I think very much of a mother figure, and all the love and all the suffering."}

Catherine with her sons Peter & James      

_{"Our Lady is to me the greatest mother who ever lived."}

Catherine      

_{"I see Mary as someone with the biggest heart ever, stretching her hands out to us, trying to guide us along that correct road to heaven."}

Catherine      

_{"For me, Mary is a friend I turn to when I’m in need."}

Catherine      

_{"Mary is my mother’s name and Our Lady  Mary is my mother in life."}

Sister Catherine      

_{"Mary is somebody so important for us because she gives her little Jesus, her infant Jesus, who is so small and so vulnerable, she is constantly offering him to us and to everybody, especially to those who are suffering and those who are feeling pain. So the joy of receiving her child, who is God made man, God who became such a vulnerable tiny child - it's the whole mystery of the incarnation of God among us - this is what Mary is going to help us to deepen and to go ever further in our understanding of this wonderful mystery of the incarnation."}

_{Sister Catherine is in the Community of the Little Sisters of Jesus.}

Cathy      

_{"I love my Blessed Mother so much. The rosary is so important in my life. She gave me the rosary and it's never been out my hands since. I love my Blessed Mother with all my heart and all my soul."}

Cecily      

_{"Mary to me is the protector and carer particularly of all the females in my life, in particular my mother and my sister, and I pray to her to look after them and their families."}

Celia      

_{"Mary is the mother of our Saviour and whenever I need something I pray to her and she listens and then she makes our petition to God."}

Celia      

_{"Mary is the mother of Jesus which to me means she is the reason we have Christmas."}

Charles      

_{"It just strikes me deep in my heart that Mary's one word, 'Yes', changed the entire world for us, changed the entire universe. That's a big thing. But for all of us we just get the chance sometimes to say yes. 'Yes' can change the world. Thanks be to God! Amen."}

Dom Charles OSB      

_{Father Charles Hallinan, who was ordained in 1954, has been a Benedictine monk for over 60 years. His life of prayer has been spent mainly at Worth Abbey:}

_{"I've always wanted to be a priest, ever since I can remember as a boy, quite young, and probably due to my uncle, who was a Benedictine priest who was good friends with his sister, my mother. But of course I owe a great deal also to many other Benedictine monks ... Well of course I've learnt a great deal since those very early childhood days, when I clearly hadn't taken on board, in fact not until fairly recently really, that the vocation of a priest is to be another Christ, alter Christus, to act 'in persona Christi', in the person of Christ, offering the sacrifice of the Mass. So it should involve and must involve sacrifice and one should welcome suffering. But I'm afraid I don't welcome suffering - I hope I accept it when it comes. It's the same as the will of God. The rule of St Benedict can be summed up I think in the word obedience, or listen, if you like. The first word of the rule of St Benedict is listen, in other words listen and then carry out what the Master tells you to do. Obedience. And that took me a long time to understand really what that means, doing the Will of God. It is the same for everybody, everybody. We're only here to do the will of God but of course we need His help for that."}

Charles      

_{"I talk to Our Lady the whole time as if she's in the room, because she is."}

Charlotte      

_{"Our Lady is a mother to me in a way that I've needed and been healed by. And her gentleness and her constancy and her presence in my life are growing and developing each day, particularly through the rosary. And I'm finding more and more love in my heart for Our Lady and pray to her more each day."}

Charlotte      

_{"I'm recording this on the 50th anniversary of my mother's death, who died when I was 9. I was obviously very young but I inherited from her a beautiful gift of great faith and love for Our Lady, and Our Lady has a very special place in my heart, in all our family's heart, as she's our Queen of Peace and Mother in Heaven. We always look to her to protect us, and I know that she has us always in mind. We've dedicated our family to her and she watches over us safely always and every day, and we love you, Mary."}

Charlotte      

_{"My favourite story in the Bible is Saint John the Baptist because, from the words, he sounds a very energetic, wild man who preaches the good news."}

Cheryl      

_{"For me, Our Lady calls me back and Walsingham is like a home to me - there's so much peace here, a great feeling of protection and nurturing. I always feel in Walsingham Our Lady puts people on your path for a reason - every conversation, every person we meet is someone or something that we're meant to come across, to discover, a little puzzle piece to our lives to help us live that fiat, that yes, that giving of ourselves each day. And coming back to Walsingham just fills us up in a new way with fresh joy that then gives us the tools to continue on for the next path in the days ahead. So yes, Mary is that mother and she has been so wonderful to me and my family."}

_{Cheryl, with her husband, runs Catholic Discipleship College in Auckland, New Zealand.}

Sister Chiara      

_{"Every day, every hour, Our Lady is remembered by me."}

Chinapa      

_{"When I think of Our Lady, she’s my heavenly mother, she gives warm hugs, warm kisses, warm embraces and I can come to her with absolutely anything that's on my mind and that's a burden. And she fills me with immense peace and love and she calms me. Our Lady for me is a way to Jesus, she brings my prayers directly to Jesus and I'm so thankful to have Our Lady in my life."}

Chloe      

_{"It's to Mary that I turn when I am looking for gentler qualities that I need help with."}

Chris      

_{"Mary is, as I see her, my mother. She's somebody who we pray to, somebody who we ask for help."}

Chris      

_{"What I’d like to say about Mary, the Mother of God: the most holy, the most gracious, the most pure, who is an inspiration to us all. We pray that she intercedes for us because she is so close to Our Lord."}

Christian      

_{"I first think I met Mary in 1997 in Lourdes … I had a very, very moving and real and living experience with the Westminster Diocesan Pilgrimage. ..And I think if anybody really wants to witness the love and the power and the spirit of Mary, there is no better place (in my view at least) than Lourdes. The magicalness of her touch is incredible. Lourdes is considered to be a place of miracles and, let me say, it's a place of hundreds of minor miracles that happen continually and consistently throughout the day. And it really needs to be experienced to be believed. So for me, Mary is obviously immaculate but just the most wonderful influence in my life."}

Christiana      

_{"For me, Our Lady - she's always all the woman that I could ever dream of being and, also for me, she's all the mother I've dreamed of as well. And it's my greatest desire to be her daughter and to make her proud."}

Christianne        

_{"Mary is the person I turn to in every need, in every requirement, in every desire, every joy and in every sorrow.  I place my whole life in her hands."}

_{Christianne has been a pilgrim many times to Medjugorje}          

_{"I went to Medjugorje several times in the 80s and 90s. After our first visit, my sister and I returned with different people who had expressed a desire to see for themselves the place that Our Lady had chosen for this most special visitation in our time. After our first visit we can back so excited by everything we had felt and witnessed, and I felt that a profound change had taken place within me. Going to Medjugorje most definitely changed my life, deepened my faith. Our Lady touches us in a special way when we make the journey to hear her message. It has been a great blessing, a great challenge, a privilege and most extraordinary blessing to have her messages and presence in our world today."}

Christianne      

_{"Time and time again Mary overcame such difficult things with such gentle and modest grace, and that is a very beautiful thing."}

Christina      

_{"Our Lady is the mother who I turn to to comfort me when I am feeling lost. She is the lady whose hand I hold as I pray the rosary, and she holds my hand as a child and leads me very gently deeper into the heart of her Son. She is the one who teaches me not to worry but to trust in God. She is my intercessor. She's my heavenly mother, and I just praise and thank God for the gift of Our Lady and for her care for me and her bringing me to where I am today. I find a home in her heart."}

Christina      

_{"I really feel Mary has in every single step of the way taken my hand and led me to her son, even times when I haven't realised it. And I look back and realise how much Mary really has been there with me."}

Christine      

_{"Our Lady is beautiful."}

Christine      

_{"I’ve had a long devotion to St Maria Goretti particularly as I’ve become a mother, a mother of four, and the importance of trying to protect my children from all the secular pressures that they’re under, in particular sexual pressures and what that can do to their dignity and their well-being as a child of God. For that intention I’ve always invoked St Maria Goretti. St Maria Goretti was a young girl in Italy from a poor family and she was attacked by a man and he tried to rape her. She fought him off to protect her chastity and her dignity. She was stabbed repeatedly and taken to hospital. On her deathbed in hospital she forgave her attacker."}

Christine Mary      

_{"Do whatever he tells you.’ That was what Mary said at the marriage feast of Cana to the stewards and just I think that's really wise advice. She leads us all to Jesus every time, and I just long to meet her and Jesus in heaven. I have them around with me now but I long to sit with them and party in heaven for the rest of my life eternally. Thank you Jesus and Mother Mary and St Joseph. Amen."}

Sister Christine of the Trinity ocd      

_{"One of my favourite pictures of Our Lady is Our Lady of Notting Hill. It was one of the sisters here who had an apparition of Our Lady and some time afterwards she drew what she saw. The picture is very powerful, it's called 'The Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary', and just looking at it is a real prayer. And she leads us through life and through the summit of Mount Carmel, which is our Order, through trials and joys and everything, she's always there and that picture is a reminder to me. She's also full of grace, she's full of the Blessed Trinity and she lets us participate in her life. I think that's wonderful - not only for me, for everybody."}

_{Sister Christine of the Trinity is in the Carmel at Notting Hill in London. She and her sisters gave their somethings about Mary during a Totus2us Novena to St Therese of Lisieux (in 2010).}

Christoph       

_{Christoph Warrack gave a TOP CHAT about OPEN CINEMA, a network of film clubs programmed by and for homeless and socially excluded people which Christoph founded in 2005.}

_{"I was working on a soup kitchen at the church in Soho Square and the homeless started to ask if they could have something more than a weekly meal, and so I started showing films, in a hall with a bunch of friends. We handmade the blinds and we painted the wall and we borrowed a projector and we started showing films and then inviting film makers to come in and talk about those films.. So this space once a week became a place where famous film makers would drop by and introduce a film to a collection of people who wouldn't ordinarily have access to a cinema, and it was really exciting and fabulous for everyone who was involved."}

Christopher      

_{"Mary is very, very humble, to the extent that her greatest joy is just to continually point our eyes not to her but to her son, and we see this in iconography with her looking down at her son Jesus. And Mary's greatest joy came from pondering Jesus and the wonderful things she heard in her own heart, and she too wants us to ponder those things and to turn to Christ in all that we do. And that's why for me Mary is just so beautiful, because she is a perfect vessel for the divine beauty and the divine love which is her son Jesus."}

_{Christopher chose John the Apostle & Evangelist as his Incredible Saint}        

_{"For me, John’s Gospel provides a window into understanding the love of Jesus and the Father, and their relationship. John the Evangelist was someone who would have known Jesus so intimately, who rested on his bosom at the Last Supper, got so close to listen to his words, that he became so effected by him that his words would have stayed with him his whole life and they can be found on the page of the Gospel in Jesus' long discourses, where we see the most beautiful love letters ever written between the Father and the Son."}

Christopher      

_{"The impressive thing about Mary is that she agreed to be the mother of God when she was about 16 and she went wholeheartedly with the will of God. Because she went wholeheartedly with the will of God, we have the redemption of the rest of mankind."}

Christopher      

_{"Mary, the Mother of God, to me is an example of selfless love and devotion."}

Brother Christopher Joseph CFR      

_{"Mary is really a complete extra outpouring of grace upon us from God."}

_{His Word on the Street is Psalm 61      
My soul finds rest in God alone - "It's truly where our souls find their rest. And having looked for rest in many different places beforehand and tried to find peace for my soul in many different places and not found rest, when I discovered that truth that my soul is at rest in God, then it became my favourite verse and was a source of great consolation many times. Praise be Jesus Christ now and forever."}

_{Brother Christopher Joseph is a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal.}

Ciara      

_{"I suppose what’s beautiful about Mary to me is her capacity to come to you in a way that is entirely different from the way that she'd come to anyone else. And that's such a beautiful thing of her being spouse of the Holy Spirit that she has got this deep awareness of the yearnings within each of us and what we need."}

Claire      

_{"Mary leads me to Jesus and she leads me to my heavenly Father, and for that I love her."}

Claire      

_{"Our Lady is a very special person for me. She’s the greatest person who I can turn to in my hour of need and my own special mother, who I pray to on a regular basis and who I have a great devotion to."}

Claire      

_{"Mary, the Mother of God, to me is my spiritual mother whom I love very much and I try and pray the rosary every day. I love to visit her places in the world, her shrines and oratories, churches that are devoted to Mary. I feel a lot of help from Mary on a daily basis and I try to offer my work to pleasing to God through Mary."}

Clare      

_{"I think that Mary is going to bring the Light back into the world again."}

Clare      

_{"Mary is my Mum and I love her, and I thank God for sharing her with us, I thank Our Lord Jesus for sharing her with us and for her love."}

Clare       

_{"I rely on Mary to lead me to her son. She's the person that I turn to in every situation and she immediately gives me stability and strength. She is my mother and I know that she'll lead me in the right direction. She never lets me down."}

Clare      

_{"I've always had a huge devotion to Our Lady. She has sustained me through thick and thin, through some terrible times in my life, some times when I've walked away and turned my face against God and everything I thought I believed in.  But always, always, she's been there, just a gentle presence in the background for me. And as a reward for that for me has been that my two daughters have the most tremendous devotion to her and I feel that she just sustains and is part of our lives. I can't imagine that any of us could function without her."}

Clare      

_{"Anybody who's listening who might wonder what it is about Mary, it's just 'come and see', as it says in Scripture, and she will be your mother and your best friend and she will never leave you."}

Claudius      

_{"Even though I am not at all worthy of any of the graces that I receive, yet Mary seems to help me all the time and I just want to say thank you to her for that, and that I love her completely and I have complete undying devotion and loyalty to her."}

Clifton      

_{"To me Mary is a very, very strong, determined woman who went through so much pain in her life for her son, but she still came through it."}

Collette      

_{"I've been to Lourdes since a little girl and I have a great connection with that place and the peace Mary gives you as our mother, no other person can do that. And it's not about her, she does it to bring us to the Lord, to show us her son, and that's the greatest gift any mother could give somebody: the gift of Our Lord and Saviour."}

<sub>Go in Peace       

"Earlier this summer I was in Walsingham and I went and made a life confession with a priest there. It was pretty life changing. I opened my heart to God, something I'd never done before, I'd been to confession many times but I'd never been honest with God and never been honest with myself I suppose. I just really put it in the Lord's hands and opened my heart to Him, and the love and mercy that I experienced through his vehicle, through his instrument the priest, just left me absolutely speechless."</sub>

<sub>TOP CHAT about Nightfever      

"Nightfever started in 2005 with World Youth Day in Cologne. It was a response to the Holy Father’s visit and it has since spread across cities across all of Europe. It came to England last year, firstly to London and we brought it to Birmingham. It was Frankie Mulgrew who encouraged me to go and talk to my parish priest and get it running. It's a very simple concept. So, on a Saturday evening we go into a busy church, maybe by a high street or where there are a lot of nightclubs and pubs, a priest will expose the Blessed Sacrament for us, the church is lit by candles, there's gentle music in the background, there'll be priests available for confession, and then we send the young people out into the streets with a candle simply to ask people to come into the church and light a candle. And then we let Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament, do the rest of the work."</sub>

Corinthia      

_{"I come to Our Lady for my family, for myself, for my work, for my friends who are going through difficult divorces and what have you, and I pray to her on a daily basis, as I do to her Father and her Son and her Husband, the whole family."}

Cosima      

_{"God chose the right person to be Jesus' mother."}

Craig      

_{"Our Lady guides me. Everything I've done in life, through my decision to be a teacher, all through her, I keep praying."}