A scholar has narrated: One summer, we went for ziyarat to Mashad with Imam and several other scholars. There we hired a house.
Our timetable was such that in the afternoons, after one or two hours rest, we would wake up and would head for the shrine together. After ziyarat, prayers and supplication, we would return to the house and in the pleasant setting of the veranda, we would sit and drink tea.
Imam Khomeini’s <ra> timetable was that he would come with everyone to the shrine; however he would shorten his ziyarat and supplication and return to the house alone. He would sweep and wash the veranda, spread a rug, switch on the samovar <apparatus for making tea> and prepare the tea. When we returned from the shrine, he would serve everyone tea.
One day I asked him: ‘What is this? You shorten you ziyarat and supplications and return home in a hurry in order to make tea for your friends?’
Imam replied: ‘I don’t consider the reward of this act to be less than that of the ziyarat and supplications.’
