An Acharya of Indian Christian Sanyasa
As Dom Francis was a man of prayer, a votary of divine love, he fully realized the power of prayer and the strength of virtue. As a person who had succeeded in transforming his whole life into an incessant prayer, he had acquired an interior silence which enabled him to sense the voice of God and abide in the interior recesses of his soul. His spirit of prayer and hard work were extraordinary, especially during the early years of Kurisumala Ashram. And during the few years before his death it was edifying to see him support himself on two walking sticks and take full part in the community prayers and public functions. He also found time to impart his spirit to guests and visitors with a few well-chosen words. Though a Westerner, Fr. Francis manifested the strength of will to modify himself to suit his chosen country in dress, language, food, and life-style. This was a great and rare accomplishment. To those living in the bosom of mother nature, engrossed in a spiritual search characterized by asceticism and meditation, his very life was a model. He was one of that exceptional race of people who could discern divine revelations through manana nidishyasana. Heir to a life of luxury in his motherland, Belgium, he had given all that up, his home and homeland. He was a great man who renounced what was his own and accepted ours, becoming one of us Indians, assimilating the patrimony of India and encouraging us to make it ours too.
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