Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946 — John Shaqi
Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946Shoghi, Effendi
Religion
Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'í's of North America 1932–1946
Shoghi, Effendi
Bahai Faith -- North America; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
The association of the First Ma_sh_riqu’l-A_dh_kár of the West with the
hallowed memories of the Purest Branch and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mother,
recently re-interred under the shadow of the Báb’s holy Shrine,
inaugurates a new, and at long last the final phase of an enterprise
which, thirty years ago, was providentially launched on the very day the
remains of the Forerunner of our Faith were laid to rest by our beloved
Master in the sepulchre specifically erected for that purpose on Mount
Carmel. The birth of this holy enterprise, pregnant with such rich, such
infinite possibilities, synchronized with, and was consecrated through,
this historic event which, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself has affirmed,
constitutes the most signal act of the triple mission He had been prompted
to perform. The site of the Temple itself was honored by the presence of
Him Who, ever since this enterprise was initiated, had, through his
messages and Tablets, bestowed upon it His special attention and care, and
surrounded it with the marks of His unfailing solicitude. Its
foundation-stone was laid by His own loving hands, on an occasion so
moving that it has come to be regarded as one of the most stirring
episodes of His historic visit to the North American continent. Its
superstructure was raised as a direct consequence of the pent-up energies
which surged from the breasts of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s lovers at a time when His
sudden removal from their midst had plunged them into consternation,
bewilderment and sorrow. Its external ornamentation was initiated and
accelerated through the energizing influences which the rising and
continually consolidating institutions of a divinely established
Administrative Order had released in the midst of a community that had
identified its vital interests with that Temple’s destiny. The measures
devised to hasten its completion were incorporated in a Plan which derives
its inspiration from those destiny-shaping Tablets wherein, in bold
relief, stands outlined the world mission entrusted by their Author to the
American Bahá’í community. And finally, the Fund, designed to receive and
dispose of the resources amassed for its prosecution, was linked with the
memory and bore the name of her whose ebbing life was brightened and
cheered by those tidings that unmistakably revealed to her the depth of
devotion and the tenacity of purpose which animate the American believers
in the cause of their beloved Temple. And now, while the Bahá’í world
vibrates with emotion at the news of the transfer of the precious remains
of both the Purest Branch and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mother to a spot which,
watched over by the Twin Holy Shrines and in the close neighborhood of the
resting-place of the Greatest Holy Leaf, is to become the focus of the
administrative institutions of the Faith at its world center, the mere act
of linking the destiny of so far-reaching an undertaking with so
significant an event in the Formative Period of our Faith will assuredly
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