Moments With Mary

The following are extracts from an Audio Book Maureen  prepared when recording was done on tape. The original was on a tape cassette and as such is not available to listen to but this is the transcript.Because when Maureen is speaking in a flow  the full-stops, etc are difficult to insert.Listen to it as if she is speaking to you to get the flow of words.Actually I have retrieved part of the Audio Book and this is now available to listen to on Maureen's Youtube Channel.

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Moments With Mary - Maureen Hughes

Chapter (1)

You see Mary wanted to be called Mary from the start. When She began talking to me in a gentle way I recognised Her to be Our Lady. From my childhood I understood that Our Lady was Jesus' mother and a very beautiful loving and wonderful person who had allowed Jesus to come into the World in a very simple and beautiful way. When She began talking to me Our Lady made it quite clear She wished me to think of Her as Mary. So I always refer to her or usually refer to her as Mary. Her first words to me were full of gentleness and Love and an understanding which made me feel so close to Her that I knew Her to be true and real. Also, very much bound to this Vision,- because She explained it to be a Vision,-was the understanding that it was moving very close to me through Mary and the sense of comfort and security was there fom the very beginning.

Mary began to talk to me quite simply about Life. She understood at that time I was trying to make sense of my own Life and She began to give me beautiful little ways in which I could simplify my Life and make my Life seem more peaceful and contented and happy. She gave me examples of her own Life at Nazareth and She showed me through this vision in a beautiful colourful simple way- that Life at Nazareth had been so peaceful, so simple,so happy, so full of joy, so full of the Love of God and nature and Life. This was quite new to me because I had never given a great deal of thought to the Life at Nazareth. I suppose on reading the Bible the impression one is given is that it was rather a hidden mysterious affair, with no real day to day living carried out and so this revelation through Mary was very astonishing in some ways, and very beautiful and really gave me a deep understanding of the humanity of the Family of Nazareth because Mary gave examples of their way of living which was very real and simple and humerous. And I must say that this sense of humour has been so much part of Mary from the beginning and it made a great deal of sense to me.

I began to see Her as a rounded personality, very beautiful personality but She was a very well balanced and vivacious personality who could look at Life in a very complete way. She also gave me a very simple understanding of the fact that Life at Nazareth had been full of joy. She gave me an explanation of this in a very simple and colourful way. She explained that the family at Nazareth had lived Life very fully, so happily- so peacefully and with a real sense of lightness and colour and brightness brought into their day to day living. So that they used their Life to actually make Life itself very happy and joyful and good. She gave me examples of Herself and Joseph and Jesus going for walks in the country, Jesus giving Her little gifts of flowers- Jesus showing Her affection by giving her these beautiful little aspects of Life which were very close to nature. And She also explained to me that Jesus was a very normal little boy- a very normal and supra-normal little boy- but She was able to understand Him quite simply and naturally in both ways. She also explained to me that they loved to give other people this very joyful, happy,understanding of Life so other people could join them in this in this simple understanding of the fact that God wishes life to be happy. God wishes people to be happy, God wishes people to Love and Live together so happily that they are uplifting each other and bringing each other into this fullness of life in a very beautiful and simple way. This why God has made people, this is why God has made the World. God hasn't wanted Life to be ugly or sad, or miserable. God really wanted people to make the World so beautiful that it really could be a Heaven. Mary explained to me that at Nazareth they began to live Life so perfectly and beautifully in this simple loving interaction with each other, within the family and with their neighbours outside the family, that this developed into a very simple philosophy of life which their trying to make their own, they called it very simply Loving and Living. Mary explained to me that each day of their Life was to be lived to the full in this lovng way. Because of this, the depth of their Joy was very beautiful, very simple, very uplifting and the radiance that they gave off from themselves was as it were transmitted to other people so that people who were near them were able to drink from this joy and this happiness and feel part of it, and feel that they were sharing in it and the beauty of this was really very moving and wholesome and peaceful. And the little family at Nazareth really understood that they were living Life perfectly in the way that God desired.

Chapter 2

Mary then began to explain to me that Her Life really needed to be understood as a Way of Life that God wanted people to understand in a very simple clear way. She explained to me that She was given Life by God so that She could live Her Life in a very perfect way, very simple but perfect way, so that people could look at Her and understand that She was perfect. She was a perfect human being and then people could try to model themselves upon Mary in a very simple way because if they realize that God had made Her as a human being, and She was living Her Life very perfectly as a human being, then they as human beings should aspire to this beautiful level of living. And Mary explained to me that if they tried to think of Her in this way people would begin to appreciate that God had allowed Her to live Her Life in this way to give people a pattern which was very beautiful and simple and loving and good and quite easy really to copy. Because Mary explained to me that She began to live Her Life in such a way that She really did organize it in a way that could let people follow it quite simply- She gave them a pattern which was very simple and She pointed me to incidents in Her Life which allowed Her to show this.For this She used examples from the Rosary and showed me that at the Annunciation She entered into a very deep bond with God-She made a special pact with God that She would try to Love Him so fully and deeply in such a loving dedicated way that through Her He would be able to let people see Himself. She really was able to bring God into the World in a very physical concrete way and through Her people were able to realize He could enter into human Life and be human and be part of humanity in a very beautiful simple way. Mary also explained to me that Life today has become very strange in its attitude to God because people today think that God really has no part in Life and what She tried to explain to me very simply was that God is Life itself. God through His Love has created everyone and everything and God really does wish people  to understand that He Loves everyone and everything so much that He wishes the World to feel that it really is a part of Him and it belongs to Him and He is looking after it and taking care of it. However Mary explained that people today have lost touch with God so much that they do not understand that He has anything to do with the World. They don't think that He belongs with it- that He has given it Life- that He is giving them Life- and He is so much involved with Life- and He is so much involved with Life that if He was for a single moment to pull Himself apart from the World, the World simply would't be- and people wouldn't be.

Now Mary tried to explain this to me in a very simple way and I increasingly understood that She really cared so deeply for the World and for people in the World and for each individual in the World that we were not understanding this enormous depth of Love and compassion and desire to help people, we were simply ignoring it. Of course I began to ask Mary quite a few questions because really I did feel that She was so close to me, so much part of my Life now that I could speak to Her in this very easy way and never once to She make me feel that I was being too familiar or disrespectful. She really did wish me to talk to Her in this simple loving friendly way,in a way which made me feel I was coming closer in what She explained to be a bond, a loving union with each other which allowed us to know each other and be happy and peaceful with each other and to understand that we would work together so simply and easily and happily that this would be our empathic union of Love.  Mary explained to me that empathy is a very deep understanding of Love which She was trying to explain to me - She was trying to let me realize that Love is the whole meaning of life and Love is the whole meaning of people and Love of course is the whole meaning of God and we have moved so far away from the real understanding of Love that the idea of Love is being so abused and trivialized that She was wanting me to understand the beauty of Love and the Reality of love and the whole way in which Love can make people happy and peaceful and free.

Chapter 3 - Mary on Love and Empathy-Free Will.

So She talked to me increasingly about Love and Peace and Happiness. I began to understand that She was trying to let me see this in a very clear way so that I could begin to offer this understanding to other people. She explained to me that if I could do this then I would be working with Her in a very beautiful way to help Her in Her enormous task of bringing the World into a simple understanding of God's Love and His desire to save it from everything that was making it unhappy. So each day Mary would talk to me about Love and about Goodness and Happiness and Peace, gradually I understood that Mary was giving me a very clear picture of what Life should be and what Life was not achieving and what people were not achieving. She explained to me very simply that people were really making a mess of Life, that Life on earth was becoming extremely unhappy, people were becoming extremely unhappy and the World was losing its sense of direction and balance. She asked me to understand that God is understanding all of this and God wishes to help people but God, because He has created  people to be perfectly free warns that He has to allow them to make their own mistakes- because if He allows them to make their own mistakes He is allowing them to develop their own Life in a free way. I was really puzzled by this because I know that God has given people Free Will but my worry ,if you could call it a worry ,is that God must have been able to organize people in some other way than this. Mary explained to me though that God really understood this to be the best way, because within this whole idea of Free Will God knows that people would eventually understand  that they could use their Free Will in a perfect way and if God had created people  without Free Will then they would never come to this understanding and they would never really fulfill themselves.  Mary explained that God has allowed people to be very free because He Loves them so deeply that He wants them to understand  for themselves the real meaning of Love. If He handn't given them this freedom then they would never come to an understanding of Love for themselves  because it would it would be something that God was imposing on them. And Mary explained that finally  people would understand very clearly why all this terrible mess that people have got themselves into had to be. She also explained to me however that if people would only begin to look at Life in a more simple way they would begin to understand this mess and they would begin to make inroads into sorting the mess out.

Mary was explaining to me that very few people in the world were really able to Love. And She explained that Love really did require a full undertanding of empathy. She explained that empathy was so involved in a very deep understanding of oneself in relation to other people and other people's relationship with oneself that unless one could really begin to move into Life in a way that allowed one to feel in a deep way, in a sensitive way- in a way that really was feeling then there simply would be no understanding of Love. And She further explained that many people really do think that they are loving people  when the Love that they are understanding themselves to be feeling and showing was built on a real misconception because they were simply feeling in a way that centred on themselves. So for example if somebody professed to Love his family and gave his family all the goods and possessions that he could to provide them with security,and thought this to be Love which in fact was simply a desire to show himself that he was able to give people something that he felt was important and therefore he was assuring himself of his own importance. And in so doing he was completely deluding himself- because as he gave his family this sort of attention all he was doing really was bolstering up his own ego- and the feeling part of of the whole interaction was very shallow because had he considered his family in any real and true way he would have realized that the security can only be gained by a real ineraction of loving feelings. Love is the whole way of being bound to goodness and kindness and caring and sharing in a way that gives of oneself rather than material goods. Now this to me was a very deep understanding of Love which really had to entered into if I were to feel that I was progressing,if I was progressing in any realistic way. And increasingly I began to see that certainly this empathy gave an understanding of Love which goes way beyond a shallow understanding- a shallow explanation and it really does require one to think of the other person in a way which is very concrete and physical, and things like suffering take on a new meaning because one understands that if one can really begin to enter into the suffering of another person in a real way, one which is actually allowing themselves to experience a dimension of Life, which is then very acute,because one is beginning to understand that suffering happens because people are not interacting with each other in a positive way, and if one begins to interact with the other person in a way that is really loving and beautiful and true, one sees that suffering should not be.- suffering should not exist because if each person is giving to the other everything that is good and beautiful of himself the other person is able to uplift himself by this interaction and the whole development would be completely positive. Mary assured me that this is the case and when She suffered on earth and Jesus suffered on earth their suffering was not brought about by themselves or their interaction with each other-it was brought about by the negativity of other people.

Chaper 4 to follow soon - see Menu

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