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Humans of the Church
www.catholicleader.com.auThe Catholic Leader, November 10, 2019
‘I learned how to pray the Rosary before
I knew how to read and write ...’
Hail Mary, a life of prayer
Teresita Wilson:
“Now I know … wisdom comes from the soul when we pray the Rosary.”
By Peter Bugden
KNEELING in the mud to pray the
Rosary as a preschooler in the Phil-
ippines was a forerunner of things to
come for Teresita Wilson.
She was leading the way then and, at 68, she’s
leading still on Brisbane’s bayside.
Teresita vividly recalls the first day her love of
the Rosary became public.
She and her family lived across the road from
a school and on this particular day she decided to
wander across.
“The catechist was in the Grade 1 classroom,
and I was not even in Grade 1,” she said.
“The catechist said, ‘Who knows how to
pray?’
“And no-one knew so when the catechist
started to pray, I kneeled down on the mud and
I prayed.
“She said, ‘You’re the only one who prayed,
so you can have this rosary’.”
Then the catechist noticed Teresita’s name
wasn’t on the Year 1 list so she went across to
see her mother.
“She knocked on the door and said, ‘Your
daughter is a good girl. I gave her the rosary be-
cause she’s the only one in the class who knows
how to say the Rosary, and I like how you teach
your daughter’.”
Six decades on, Teresita is leading the Our
Lady of Fatima Rosary Group that prays every
third Sunday in a park at Birkdale, on Brisbane’s
bayside.
Teresita said she was prompted to start the
group about three years ago after hearing a talk
by an archbishop encouraging the formation
of prayer groups, and the use of icons of either
Jesus or Mary.
“And I thought that is a good idea; that’s
why I started (our prayer) group, and it’s really
worked – it drew people,” she said.
It’s just an extension of what she’s been doing
all her life.
“I learned how to pray the Rosary before I
knew how to read and write, because my mother
taught me,” Teresita said.
Teresita’s mother and father prayed the Ro-
sary every night with their 13 children.
At the end of a busy day it was time to pray
and Teresita’s father would lead.
He would ask each of his children about their
day, and Teresita said he would remind them that
“God has given you this good life; it’s our God
that has given you this”.
“Yes, daughter ... it’s God,” he would say.
“Then my father would talk to us one by one,
and talk about how God gave it all to us, and
then ask us what have we done all day, and we
would tell him,” Teresita said.
“We would even tell him when we were
naughty.”
When it came time to form her Rosary group
at St Anthony’s, Alexandra Hills, it was former
parish priest Fr Emmanuel Aguiyi she turned to
for support and he guided her through the teeth-
ing problems.
“He would tell me: ‘... It’s all up to God ...
Give it up to God’,” she said.
“Sometimes we had 30, and sometimes we
had four ... sometimes more than 30 ...
“Father said, ‘Give it all to God, don’t be so
worried’.
“I said, ‘Father, I am afraid of failure’.
“And he said, ‘If you give it to God, then you
will not be afraid’.
“So I gave it up to God.”
People come to the Rosary group from various
parishes, including Cleveland and Birkdale par-
ish, and not just for prayer.
Prayer is followed by lunch and time to chat
and support each other.
Teresita makes sure she’s there early, be-
cause there’s more to do than just turn up and
pray.
“I go there early to do the set-up,” she said.
“The Filipino way is we have to do flower
arrangement – so many flowers with Mother
Mary’s statue …”
Teresita said one of the reasons the Rosary
was special to her was because “it’s peaceful”.
“It gives me peace,” she said.
And she laughs when she tells why she keeps
on praying it – “I keep going because I keep get-
ting problems ...”
“Now I know ... wisdom comes from the soul
when we pray the Rosary,” she said.
She also loves the way faith deepens among
the Rosary and Charismatic prayer groups.
“It’s like infectious; it spreads and we become
just like ... we are solid,” she said.
“We now have to pray because it works.”
Teresita’s heritage, who migrated from the
Philippines in 1984, also led to her offering
another much appreciated outreach to Filipino
Catholics.
“When my mum died in 1997, I started to pray
the Rosary for the Dead,” she said.
She could see the benefit of introducing that in
Brisbane for other Filipinos.
“I have that prayer for nine consecutive days,
and we’ll be together with the mourning people
so we can support them, and that is a Filipino
tradition,” she said.
Mourners gather and she leads them in the
Rosary for the Dead.
“(That’s) all over Brisbane, sometimes Logan,
sometimes past Caboolture, where there are
Filipinos who cannot go home, because their
mum died in the Philippines (for instance) – they
have no money to go there – we just mourn with
them, we pray with them, because that is the
tradition,” Teresita said.
“And then on the ninth day, we ask the priest
to have Mass in their house.”
Others have come on board to lead, so Ter-
esita is not kept as busy in this ministry as she
once was.
Still, she is always ready to pray the Rosary or
offer support where it’s needed.
If friends or acquaintances come to her over-
burdened with problems, she asks them if they
know how to pray the Rosary, and offers them
Rosary beads.
“Yes, I always have them in my bag ...
because out of nowhere someone needs it,” she
said.
I said, ‘Father, I
am afraid of failure’.
And he said, ‘If
you give it to God,
then you will not be
afraid’. So I gave it
up to God.