Praise be to God, you have arisen to serve Him, and are actively teaching and spreading His Faith. Such a bounty merits thanks a thousand times over, and praises forever, in the hallowed sanctuary of the one Beloved. Convey my Bahá’í salutations to all the faithful. 31: Although that supreme calamity, that ... (143) Although that supreme calamity, that great ordeal, the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, put the torch to the harvest of our hearts, and brought down both our outer and inner beings, wedding us to grief and ceaseless pain, yet praised be God, He Who is the Dayspring of the Covenant has appointed in writing a specific centre, and designated the Guardian of the Cause, Shoghi Effendi, as the one toward whom must turn all those who follow Bahá’u’lláh—His purpose being that the Faith of God and His Cause should remain secure and safe. For this greatest of gifts it is fitting that we should return a thousand thanks to the one Beloved, and offer a thousand praises to His court of holiness. Likewise, the hand of divine grace has reared blessed souls who are shining today like lamps of guidance in the assemblage of the Company on High, and who like luminous stars are casting their bright rays across the skies of faithfulness. How often we heard the Master, the Centre of the Covenant, say: ‘At the time when Christ rose out of this mortal world and ascended into the Eternal Kingdom, He had twelve disciples, and even of these, one was cast off. But because that handful of souls stood up, and with selflessness, devotion and detachment, resolved to spread His holy Teachings and to scatter abroad the sweet fragrances of God, disregarding the world and all its peoples, and because they utterly lost themselves in Christ—they succeeded, by the power of the spirit, in capturing the cities of men’s hearts, so that the splendour of the one true God pervaded all the earth, and put the darkness of ignorance to flight. ‘Now when I shall depart from this world, I shall leave more than fifty thousand blessed individuals, every one of whom is staunch and firm as the high mountains, shining out over the earth like sparkling stars. These are the quintessence of loyalty and fellowship and love. They are the self-sacrificing watchers over the Cause, and they are the guides to all who seek after truth. Judge from this what the future will be!’ It is certain that when we act in accordance with the Teachings of the Abhá Beauty and the counsels of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, then will this world become the Abhá Paradise, and its thorns and brambles of cruelty will change into a blossoming garden of the faithful. May we all be enabled to achieve this end. 32: O faithful servant of the Best-Beloved, the ...