The temple for Srila Prabhupada's visit consisted mostly of arranging that every day there would be solid big preaching engagements for him, so that he could preach all day long to as many people as possible. As part of this plan, an entire day of preaching was scheduled in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico, were there was situated very large numbers of receptive intellectual and philosophically oriented upper classes of people.
As part of the schedule, it was considered that possibly Srila Prabhupada might like to take rest and or take prasadam during the afternoon at the house of family Raul Figueroa, the parents of Laxsmipriya D.D. (Lydia Figueroa) in Cuernavaca. So arrangements were made that temple prasadam (in bucket) would be arranged (cleaned and straightened up). It was planned that at some point Prabhupada would sit down for lunch with Mr. Figueroa (the hosts), at table, take prasadam, and of course, exchange with them Kishna consciousness.
Before proceeding further it is imperative that the reader understand something about Christianity in Mexico.
In Mexico, a crucifix is not a just simple cross as one sees, for example, in the churches of the United States. In Mexico a crucifix is a cross with a murti of Jesus Christ strung up on it with spikes driven through his hands and feet.
He is hanging there, nailed to the cross with blood running from the spikes in his and hands. There is a crown of thorns digging into his head and skull, cuts with blood streaming down his face from the thorns. He has a forlorn, hopeless, defeated look on his face, as he hangs there, suffering. That is what a crucifix looks like in Mexico. And they come in all sizes, including small, life size, and bigger.
There was one of these crucifixes in the bedroom that was to be offered to Srila Prabhupada as a place to rest if he wanted to do so. Prabhupada and his disciples arrived at the house, as planned, during the afternoon. As he entered the living room, he chatted in a friendly manner with some of the visitors at the house, and shortly was taken into the bedroom to see if he was interested in resting.
Srila Prabhupada carefully took a look at everything in the room, and stopped in front of the crucifix. He looked at the crucifix for a while and then turned to his disciples and said: "Suppose this afternoon l were to step out into the street. And I lay there in the street full of bullet holes with my blood running all over the place. Would you like to have a photograph of that?" Disciples answer: "No! No! No!"
Prabhupada then turned back and looked again at the crucifix and said, "Is that any way to love God?"
He then promptly left the room. Shortly after that, he left the house. He did not stay to eat there, but went straight back to Mexico City. We loaded the buckets of prasadam, and also proceeded immediately back to the temple in Mexico City.
Anantacarya Dasa
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