Our Founders

Francis Acharya, well known in Indian monastic circles as one of the forerunners of the Christian Ashram Movement, crossed over to the Promised Land on January 31, 2002. His life began on the 17th of January, 1912, in Belgium, the land of missionaries, and came to an end in India, the abode of maharshis. He was ninety. “Our span is seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong,” says the psalmist (Ps. 90:10). “Ninety for those who are stronger,” one is tempted to add. A true Indian sannyasi with a many-sided personality, he was “still bearing fruit when old, still full of sap, still green” (Ps. 92:14).

Early days and vocation

John Mahieu, who in time became Francis Acharya, was the fifth son of a prosperous farmer. After schooling and business studies in Brussels, divine providence brought him to London. There his latent spiritual senses were awakened and captivated by Gandhiji, the so-called “half-naked fakir”, who had arrived for the Round Table Conference. The Mahatma’s apparent holiness and commitment to personal values struck a chord in John’s heart. It was a foreshadowing of the spiritual symphony that would soon follow.

John served in the Belgian army from 1932 to 1933, when the finger of the Lord beckoned him to His ranks to fight a new kind of warfare, an unseen and interior one. After a period of profound pondering he left the army and entered the Trappist (Cistercian) monastery of Our Lady of Scourmont at Chimay, Belgium, taking the name Francis. He had chosen that monastery because its Abbot, Dom Anselm le Bail, a reformer and visionary in his own right, was planning to establish a foundation in India, the land of Mahatma Gandhi. Francis served as novice-master there from 1946 to 1949 and later at Caldey Abbey in Great Britain.

Scourmont later dropped its plans for an Indian foundation. After twenty years as a Trappist monk and priest, with degrees from Rome, Louvain and Paris, Fr. Francis found himself alone as he set sail for India. He was going to join two like-minded Frenchmen: Henri le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda), a Benedictine monk, and Fr. Jules Monchanin (Swami Paramarubi Ananda), a missionary priest. They had already founded Saccidananda Ashram (Shantivanam) near Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu.

Kurisumala Ashram

The months immediately following Fr. Francis’s landing at Bombay in July 1955 were pilgrim days. He travelled the length and breadth of India, absorbing the culture and traditions of this “cradle of monasticism”. His stay at Shantivanam with its founders lasted a year. Then came an invitation from Zacharias Mar Athanasius, Bishop of Tiruvalla in Kerala, and he decided to sink roots there. On March 21, 1958 he established Kurisumala Ashram (the “Syrian Shantivanam”, as Fr. Monchanin put it) near Vagamon, Kerala, in the company of Fr. Bede Griffiths, the well-known Benedictine monk, and a couple of aspirants.

Their lifestyle in the first days was rigorous and simple in the extreme. Whatever essential commodities they lacked, water was certainly not one of them. Monsoon rains lashed the mountainside with such fury that they soon realised the inadequacy of their thatched hut against the onslaught of humidity and the need for a stone building. Fr. Francis loved to recall how their primitive living conditions had brought tears to the eyes of their visiting Bishop, who once told them: “If I were free, I’d immediately join you!”

Enveloped by the elements in the shadow of the cross, this small nucleus grew into a koinonia of fifteen in three years, under the watchful eyes of Fr. Francis, who was their father, mother, confidant and guru. Of the scenic beauty of Kurisumala’s surroundings he wrote:

By back-breaking labour, which is the lot of pioneers, they transformed this beautiful but infertile tract of land into a veritable paradise of green pastures, flower gardens and vegetable beds. Acharya’s search for a livelihood and his concern for the welfare of the needy people nearby led to the establishment of the Kurisumala dairy farm. This agricultural development and the cattle-breeding facilities soon gave Kurisumala the image of the promised land to many.

Three strands of daily life

Their daily life was woven out of three distinctive strands.

• Syrian Liturgy. An oriental and essentially poetic liturgy deeply rooted in the thought and language of the Bible, with a vivid sense of the resurrection.
• Indian Monastic Lifestyle. Inculturated, simple, nature-oriented and austere.
• Benedictine-Cistercian Spirituality. Based on the Rule of Saint Benedict, with its emphasis on community prayer, manual labour and lectio divina (meditative, prayerful spiritual reading).

Prayer with the Harp of the Spirit

Modelling their life on the early Church of Jerusalem, they lived the common life to the hilt, sharing living quarters, basic amenities and goods. Prayer services were at first in Syriac. Fr. Francis, driven by the typical Cistercian search for authenticity, travelled all the way to Iraq and managed to procure original Syriac prayers of the Antiochene rite (the Penqitho). Through a Herculean effort spanning nearly two decades, he translated selected portions into four volumes totalling 2,300 pages, named Prayer with the Harp of the Spirit.

“…He has freely used his sources with striking effect, reflecting the Christian freedom and creative genius of the great masters of liturgical prayer in the past,” wrote Orientalia Christiana Periodica of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, praising the first of the four volumes, adorned as it is with “seeds of the word” gleaned from the spiritual heritage of India.

His fecund pen also produced a book of daily readings on the lives and sayings of saints from different religious traditions, a lectionary with commentary for the liturgical feasts of the year, a translation of the Ritual of the Clothing of Monks in the Syrian tradition, and some other unpublished works. He also took an active interest in publishing Malayalam translations of two gems of Eastern Christian monastic spirituality, The Philokalia and The Ladder of Divine Ascent.

Home to the Cistercian shore

Immersed in the regular monastic milieu of prayer, work and spiritual reading, this small band of sadhakas, brahmacharis and sannyasis continued to cross milestones: Fr. Francis’s Indian citizenship, Fr. Bede’s departure to Shantivanam as its superior, Fr. Francis’s shashtiabdapurti and his taking up the title of “Acharya”, and the introduction of the Bharatiya Pooja.

Ever the able and concerned captain, he piloted Kurisumala Ashram back to the Cistercian shore towards the end of his earthly voyage. In July 1998 Kurisumala was incorporated “as it is” into the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance, with the status of Abbey. The title of Abbot was conferred on him a year later, just before the Cistercian General Chapter at Lourdes, where he was the doyen and, in another sense, the babe.

Little wonder that his twilight days were brightened by an ever-radiant face that spoke volumes of his inner joy and contentment at having run a good race. When heart failure transported him from time to eternity, the first words he heard must surely have been, “Well done, good and faithful servant…”

His body was taken to Pushpagiri Hospital, Tiruvalla, where it lay on display for four days in a glass-sided mortuary, only a stone’s throw from the Bishop’s home where he and Fr. Bede had begun their lives as sannyasis before setting out for Kurisumala. Another remarkable coincidence was the place where his mortal remains were finally laid to rest: the former pilgrimage shrine at the Ashram, right next to the site where they had set up their first hut and begun life at Kurisumala. These curious coincidences of beginning and ending at the same place could perhaps be signs that he returned straight to the embrace of the Heavenly Father from whom he began his earthly pilgrimage.

Francis Acharya the man

Fr. Francis Acharya was a man of many sides. Short of stature but a giant in faith and resolve, he rubbed shoulders with patriarchs and peasants and became “all things to all people” in a real sense. He was a loving son to his parents, a genuine monk to his fellow cenobites, a man of verve and vision to his contemporaries, a spiritual father par excellence to his sons at Kurisumala and to many others, a gracious host to all who visited his Ashram, an unsung up-lifter of the poor in Vagamon, a true Gandhian to all Indians and an inspiration to many. It must be admitted that he was also a thorn in the flesh to some.

His strict and unyielding ways occasionally rubbed people the wrong way, especially in the early days at Kurisumala. Sometimes it was misunderstanding that caused problems. “It is puzzling to see how the best intentions, how works of dedication almost invariably arouse suspicions and opposition in one’s own circles and in other circles,” Fr. Francis said once in an interview.

In course of time the Lord smoothed the rough edges of His chosen instrument on the grindstone of adversity and physical suffering, so that sweetness and charm emanated from him towards the end, with only an occasional overcast to remind others of his garam masala days. “Father Francis yesterday and Father Francis today are as far apart as night and day,” was how a senior sannyasi put it. And so it was with heavy hearts and brimming eyes that the brothers of Kurisumala gathered around the death-bed of their beloved Father, realising that he had come full circle: from quick-tempered to serene, from demanding to understanding, from stubborn to docile.

He is no longer with us in flesh and blood, but his spirit lives on in the living tradition of Kurisumala Ashram, in the daily celebrations from Prayer with the Harp of the Spirit, and in a special way in the hearts of the poor folk of Vagamon.

Early life and Oxford

Alan Richard Griffiths was born at Walton-on-Thames in 1906 into a British middle-class family, the youngest of three, with a sister and a brother. Soon after his birth Alan’s father lost his business, cheated by a partner to the last penny. Mr. Griffiths lost face and never regained his role or place in the family. Alan’s mother, who then became both parents to the children, had to move to less comfortable surroundings, go out to work and manage her own housecleaning.

At the age of twelve Alan was enrolled in a public school for poor boys, known as Christ’s Hospital. This tall, lean, poor boy ranked first in his exams. Receiving a scholarship to Oxford, he went to study English literature and philosophy from 1925 to 1929. Poetry, a lifelong love for Alan, was a step towards living out the full interiority of his spirit. During his third year at Oxford C. S. Lewis became his tutor, and the two became great friends, searching together for the Ultimate and for some form of fitting religion. Alan graduated in journalism, which prepared him well for the twelve books he would later author. A period of deep reflection and experiments in simple living followed his graduation, and he began searching for the meaning of life.

Conversion and the Benedictines

In 1931 he had a deep conversion experience and began reading Cardinal Newman’s Development of Christian Doctrine. He was deeply touched by it, both intellectually and spiritually, in spite of his mother’s words that her greatest grief would be if anyone in her family embraced Roman Catholicism. Alan visited Prinknash Benedictine Abbey and stayed six weeks, much impressed. On Christmas Eve 1931 he was received into the Church and at midnight Mass received his first Communion. A few weeks later he entered Prinknash Abbey.

On December 20, 1932 Alan was clothed as a Benedictine novice and received the name Bede, which means prayer. Fr. Bede offered his perpetual vows in 1937 and was ordained in 1940, at the age of 34. One of the monastic tasks he most enjoyed was that of guest-master, since the Abbey attracted people from different cultures and walks of life. He also served as prior of two monasteries, Farnborough and Pluscarden. Around this period he started writing The Golden String, his autobiography.

India and Kurisumala

In 1955 he left for India in the company of Fr. Benedict Alappatt to start a foundation. The ashram at Kenkeri, Bangalore, failed to take off, and he eventually joined Fr. Francis Acharya and co-founded Kurisumala Ashram in Vagamon, Kerala, in 1958. Kurisumala Ashram stood on 88 acres of donated land in the ghats of Kerala. Fathers Francis and Bede used the Syriac rite and developed a fitting monastic liturgy in that language.

Wanting to enter the tradition of Indian sannyasa (monkhood) and to establish a Christian ashram, they dressed in kavi (saffron) robes, and Fr. Bede took the Sanskrit name Dayananda. During his time there Fr. Bede wrote Christ in India and studied the religions and culture of India, which he had loved from the start. In 1968, at the invitation of Swami Abhishiktananda and with the encouragement of Fr. Francis, he moved to Saccidananda Ashram (Shantivanam) in Tamil Nadu as its superior.

Shantivanam

Shantivanam, the ashram in Tamil Nadu dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity (hence its Sanskrit name, Saccidananda), had been founded in 1950 by two French priests: Fr. Jules Monchanin, a diocesan missionary, and Fr. Henri le Saux (Abhishiktananda), a Benedictine monk. They lived in thatched huts, in the real poverty of the poor in India. On October 10, 1957 Fr. Monchanin died in France, where he had gone for surgery. Abhishiktananda stayed on at Shantivanam until 1968, when he asked that someone from Kurisumala come, and he retired to the North. His heart gave out in Rishikesh, and he died on December 7, 1973.

Fr. Bede Griffiths arrived at Shantivanam from Kurisumala with two other monks and again immersed himself in the study of Indian thought, attempting to relate it to Christian theology. He went on a pilgrimage and studied Hinduism with Raimundo Panikkar. Under Fr. Bede’s guidance Shantivanam became a centre of contemplative life, of inculturation and of inter-religious dialogue. He contributed greatly to the development of Indian Christian theology.

In 1973 he published Vedanta and the Christian Faith. The first copies of Return to the Center arrived in time to be the centrepiece of the temple-kolam for Father’s 70th birthday, December 17, 1976. His complete commentary on the Bhagavad Gita appeared in 1987 under the title Rivers of Compassion. By 1989 Fr. Bede had completed another volume, The New Vision of Reality, which together with The Marriage of East and West (1982) is his most popular.

Final years

On January 25, 1990 Bede Griffiths suffered a first stroke in his hut at Shantivanam. One month to the day, in February, he was cured in a struggle with death and divine love, which he later described as an intense mystical experience. The next couple of years were mainly occupied by lecture tours to the U.S.A. On January 24, 1993 he had a series of strokes which finally brought about his death on May 13, in his hut at Shantivanam in South India, surrounded with tender loving care. Fr. Bede Griffiths was laid to rest near the Ashram church.

A monk in whom there was no guile, and who was last to see the guile that may have been in another; a monk with a universal heart and an icon of integrity and guilelessness: such was Father Bede Griffiths, Swami Dayananda, who died barefoot and clothed in the colour of the sun, in his thatched hut at Shantivanam.