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 two-year respite, well-earned after the expenditure of such a colossal
effort, covering such a tremendous range, during so dark a period, is now
ended. The prosecutors of the Plan who in the course of six war-ridden
years achieved such prodigies of service in the Western Hemisphere from
Alaska to Magallanes are now collectively summoned to assume in the course
of the peaceful years ahead still weightier responsibilities for the
opening decade of the Second Century. The time is ripe, events are
pressing. Hosts on high are sounding the signal for inauguration of second
Seven Year Plan designed to culminate first Centennial of the year Nine
marking the mystic birth of Bahá’u’lláh’s prophetic mission in
Síyáh-_Ch_ál at Ṭihrán.
A two-fold responsibility urgently calls the vanguard of the dawn-breakers
of Bahá’u’lláh’s Order, torch-bearers of world civilization, executors of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mandate, to arise and simultaneously bring to fruition the
tasks already undertaken and launch fresh enterprises beyond the borders
of the Western Hemisphere.
The first objective of the new Plan is consolidation of victories already
won throughout the Americas, involving multiplication of Bahá’í centers,
bolder proclamation of the Faith to the masses. The second objective is
completion of the interior ornamentation of the holiest House of Worship
in the Bahá’í world designed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of
the inception of this historic enterprise. The third objective is the
formation of three national Assemblies, pillars of the Universal House of
Justice, in the Dominion of Canada, Central and South America. The fourth
objective is the initiation of systematic teaching activity in war-torn,
spiritually famished European continent, cradle of world-famed
civilizations, twice-blest by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visits, whose rulers
Bahá’u’lláh specifically and collectively addressed, aiming at
establishment of Assemblies in the Iberian Peninsula, the Low Countries,
the Scandinavian states, and Italy. No effort is too great for community
belonging to the continent whose rulers Bahá’u’lláh addressed in the Most
Holy Book, whose members were invested with spiritual primacy by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and named by Him apostles of His Father, whose country was
the first western nation to respond to the Divine Message and deemed
worthy to be first to build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace, whose
administrators evolved the pattern of the embryonic world order,
consummated the first stage of the Divine Plan, and whose elevation to the
throne of everlasting dominion the Center of the Covenant confidently
anticipated. As the resistless impulse propelling the Plan accelerates,
the American Community must rise to new levels of potency in response to
the divine mandate, scale loftier heights of heroism, insure fuller
participation of the rank and file of members, and closer collaboration
with the agencies designed to insure attainment of the fourfold
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