Once when I was visiting HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami Maharaj, due to polio-related muscle weakness and heart trouble I was mostly bedridden and could not climb stairs to go to the bathroom. So Swamiji said for me to stay on the couch in the basement, where there was a toilet by the laundry. After midnight the first night, someone came quietly down the stairs and tip-toed to the laundry room with an armload of clothes. I was amazed to see that it was Bhakti Tirtha Swami!
I said, Maharaja, what are you doing? Why are you doing laundry at this hour? He replied “The laundry needs to be done, but the Devotees are tired. I wanted to let them sleep. I have rounds to chant anyway“. He stayed and talked with me a while and then went to chant some rounds. During the time that I was living in the basement, Swami would send Maha Prasadam down to me, and come to visit me late at night, while doing laundry and/or chanting his rounds. Eventually he had the Devotees make popcorn and he and about 20 Devotees would come to the basement in the evening to visit with me and listen to Swami and I discuss Vaishnavism in the Bible and ancient Africa.
As a Child Evangelist, Swami was very knowledgeable about the Bible, and he actually still loved JESUS very much, and meditated on JESUS taking the sins of His Devotees, and the whole World. We used to discuss Vasudeva Datta, the Catholic Saints who were Intercessors or ‘Victim Souls’ (Stigmatists) and the Pure Land Buddhist Bodhisattvas. He was very much in that mood of taking the Vi-Karma or sins of others to guarantee their Salvation.
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