Bishop Pakenham-Walsh . :
BISHOP PAKENHAM-WALSH
On September 27, 1950, I was. consecrated Bishop in Coimbatore.
It was a strenuous day.
There were three long services with many impressive and moving moments.
Hundreds of greetings poured in.
Certainly to me the most touching greeting during that memorable day was when Bishop PakenhamWalsh, that veteran servant of the Cross, said to me, 'You are now my Bishop'.
The presence of Bishop Pakenham-Walsh and Mrs Walsh so near us and their continual help in the Diocese was of very great vaiue to us, though their Ashram had no official connection with the Diocese of Coimbatore.
When Bishop Pakenham-Walsh was the Principal of Bishop's College, there was among his students a small group of Orthodox
Syrian Christian young men, who had been studying in the Union Christian College at Alwaye, and had been praying that God would remove the reproach from their Church of not having sent out missionaries to other parts of India or of the world, during the many centuries of its existence.
One of those students was K. C.
Verghese.
In consultation with this group, the Bishop decided that, with the approval of the Bishops of the Orthodox Syrian
Church, an Ashram outside Travancore and Cochin should be started as the first foreign mission field of their Church; that it should admit families as well as single men; that the Bishop should resign his post and go there with his wife, while a member of the Orthodox Syrian Church should be the Head.
Though Walsh was approaching the retirement age of 65, his decision to leave the College and Calcutta earlier than he would normally have done caused much disappointment to his many friends.
I was teaching in Bishop's College at that time and the news of his decision to resign from the College caused me considerable sorrow.
But the Ashram ideal with its simplicity, its community life, its routine of manual labour, its regular hours of prayer and its many opportunities for service had always appealed to the Walshes.
They left Bishop's College in 1935.
In due course the present site of the Tadagam Ashram was chosen; a gift of money from Walsh's grateful past and present
A, J. APPASAMY
students of Bishop's College paid for the land.
The Bishop's provident fund met the cost of the Chapel and of the simple buildings around it, K. C. Verghese was ordained and appointed Head of the Ashram in 1936. Dividends from the Bishop's investments and those of his wife, together with donations, enabled them to meet all current expenses.
Tadagam is in a very beautiful valley surrounded on three sides by hills, nine miles from Coimbatore, with a frequent bus service to and from the city. There is a number of large and small villages within a few miles' radius.
The Tadagam Ashram where Walsh ministered for nearly quarter of a century was his most distinctive service to the Church of Christ.
Mrs Walsh proved a splendid partner and threw herself heart and soul into the life of the Ashram.
The members of the Ashram, about fifteen in number during Walsh's later years, had all things in common.
None of them, while in the Ashram, possessed money; anything they received went into a common fund, from which all their needs were met.
They met in the Chapel in the early morning, at noon and after dark; their services in Tamil were those of the Orthodox
Syrian Church, with the addition of the Psalms and Lessons for the day, the former in English, and the latter in Malayalam or Tamil.
If any of their ordained brethren were present on Sunday or a great Festival, the Holy Qurbana (literally 'the Holy Gift', the Syrian name for Holy Communion) was celebrated.
The Bishop celebrated the Holy Communion in English on two days in the week, and sometimes on Sundays.
They had a daily dispensary to which a lot of sick folk came; if the disease was serious, they persuaded the patient to go to the Coimbatore Government Hospital.'
One of their women workers was a trained midwife, and' was greatly in demand at child-births throughout the valley.
There was a small library.
The men gave regular teaching, by request, in several villages, and took medical help where needed.
They made friends with the High School boys at Tadagam, and organized them in social service, village sanitation, and adult literacy; especially in Bible studies, and in occasional camps.
Quite a number .of villagers, men and women, came along with their children to a Service of worship in the Chapel on Sunday.
BISHOP PAKENHAM-WALSH
Besides the celibate men, married couples joined the, Ashram; at times children were also living in the Ashram.
They had always three or more women who, though they did not take the Ashram promises, were most helpful in spiritual life and worked within the Ashram and among the Hindu women of the villages.
The Ashram raised some garden produce for which they had paid workers, supplementing the work of the Ashram members.
The cooking of food, sweeping and other necessary labour were done by Ashram members.
As far as possible they followed Indian customs, such as sitting on mats for food and in the chapel.
The Bishop wrote in his Lent letter for 1954:
The most extraordinary feature about our Ashram is that members of two ancient Churches, the Orthodox Syrian
Church of Travancore and the Anglican Church (now the Church of South India), live and worship together, despite the fact that the former Church is so far not even on its way to be in communion with the latter.
That members of these two Churches should live united together as members of Christ's one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, should worship together at their respective Holy Communion and Holy Qurbana services, and should accept the painful inhibition that they must not receive the sacred elements from the hands of the Bishops or Presbyters of the other Church is an order that we all obey, believing that when we are not allowed to receive sacramentally the Body and Blood of Christ, He is giving us spiritually His very Body and Blood and is thereby uniting us, though members of two separated Churches, in His own Body, the holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Besides his ministry of healing, which I have already described in the chapter on Divine Healing, Walsh was always ready to visit our churches for holding teaching missions and retreats. He was particularly good when he expounded the Apostles' Creed in a simple and popular way to large congregations.
He was also ready to help in Holy Week Services and on Festival days when we needed his help.
Apart from these activities of teaching, preaching and healing he spent much time writing out his lectures on Church History which he had given in Bishop's College. They were published by the S.P.C.K. in three volumes, with the title
A. J. APPASAMY
Lights and Shades of Christendom.
He wrote a little study book on Prayer for the Coimbatore Diocese which proved very useful.
He was an indefatigable worker and continued to serve the Church to the end of his life.
~ I was told that he was ill.
On December 19, 1968, I went to the Ashram and found him seated in the garden. The young men in the Ashram had carried him in a chair. The sun had gone down and it was beginning to get cool. He had a warm rug on.
To the left were the blue hills which gave beauty and fertility to the Tadagam Valley.
He loved the hills and liked to spend the evening looking at them.
In front of him was the vegetable garden of the Ashram and tomatoes were being plucked and put near his chair. The flower garden close by was in lovely bloom.
He seemed to be in normal health.
He was quite cheerful, as usual.
When I asked him how he felt, he said, with a smile, 'Oh, I am all right.'
The account which Mrs Walsh gave of him was not so good.
She said that for some time he had given up his ministry of intercession for the sick:
He had had sometimes as many as a thousand patients on his prayer list.
He found this work too taxing and the letters asking for his prayers had now been forwarded to the Rev. C. F, Ash, Chaplain of the Cathedral in Bangalore.
Mr Ash and a group of people in his church were meeting regularly to pray for the sick, whose names and needs had been sent to them.
We heard later that the Bishop was not able to take any food and that his strength was going down.
On Friday, January gth, the Rev. B. F. Tiliander of the Swedish Lutheran Church was calling on me.
At that time a young man from the Ashram came and informed us that the Bishop was sinking.
On one occasion the Bishop had prayed for Mr Tiliander in an Anointing Service which had been greatly blessed.
Mr Tiliander was also anxious to see the Bishop and so we immediately left in his car for Tadagam.
It had already become dark.
Bishop Walsh's friends were standing here and there on the verandah and in the garden talking in whispers.
We were taken to see him.
He was lying on the hard wooden cot on which he generally slept.
His room was quite small, with a tiled roof, the walls only three or four feet high and the rest of the space covered with bamboo mats,
He had
BISHOP PAKENHAM-WALSH
already begun to breathe hard, the painful breath of a dying man.
He could not recognise us.
His faithful and loyal companion through the years, Mrs Walsh, sat on her hard wooden cot and kept watch.
She was reading a deeply abstruse book on The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.
All their friends were standing near, ready to give him whatever help was necessary.
On the morning of the roth I was informed that he had passed away and that the funeral would take place at Tadagam.
The end had come on Friday, Jan. gth, at 8.30 p.m. in his eightyseventh year.
The folk in the Ashram cycled long distances in the night and informed all his friends in Coimbatore about the Funeral Service.
The Bishop had expressed the wish that he might be buried according to the Anglican rite.
The Ashram folk asked me to take the Service.
The Funeral Service was arranged at mid-day on Saturday.
Though this was a difficult hour for many people, there was a large congregation.
Hundreds of people had come to Tadagam, travelling on bicycles, in buses or in cars. The Bishop was laid in the centre of the chapel in the simple robes of a C.S.I.
Bishop.
He was wearing a much used cotton cassock with the purple colour faded, a rochet and a saffron stole.
His cot was covered with the many wreaths and garlands which his friends had brought.
The Bishop worked for Church Union all his life.
In the Funeral Service representatives from many churches took part.
The Rev. B. F. Tiliander read a Psalm.
The Rev. Sena Rufus represented the London Mission and read another passage from Scripture.
The Rev. T. T. Joseph of the Mar Thoma Church read some prayers.
Representing the Church of South India, I took the Anglican Burial Service.
Mr Ninan of the Orthodox Syrian Church paid a fine tribute to the Bishop.
Bishop Mar Eusthathios, also of the Orthodox Syrian Church, gave the final blessing.
It was quite long but was chanted devoutly and beautifully.
Bishop Pakenham-Walsh had expressed the desire that no coffin might be made for him.
He had lived the simple life and he wanted to be buried simply.
Immediately outside the chapel a grave was dug. A few rough planks were put in the sides of