The Passing of the Greatest Holy Leaf

Your touching words in connection with the sudden removal of the Greatest Holy Leaf from their midst have greatly alleviated the burden of sorrow that weighs so heavily upon their hearts and have demonstrated that in their great and irreparable loss the friends are faithfully sharing their sorrow and grief.

The passing of the Greatest Holy Leaf, so tragic in its suddenness, has, indeed, divested the Holy Family of its unique adornment and the Bahá’í world at large of one of its noblest and most precious members. She was to us all not only a true friend but the real embodiment of those traits and characteristics, of that genuine and profound love that was born of God, and that we had learned to admire in the Master...

In this great loss that the followers of the Faith both in East and West have come to suffer our Guardian’s share is the greatest and perhaps the most cruel. His sole comfort, in this great calamity, is to see the friends unitedly working for the spread of a Cause for which our departed Khánum had given up all her life, and for the triumph of which she cherished the highest hopes. The expressions of zealous enthusiasm and hope, of genuine self-abnegation and love that the American believers and especially our precious sister Mrs Agnes Parsons demonstrated in their last Convention meeting have greatly brightened the closing days of her life. Shoghi Effendi trusts that her memory will increasingly serve to cheer and hearten the friends in their ever-widening activities.

Source: Letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, in Bahíyyih Khánum (1982). Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #19242.

Effendi, O. B. O. S.. (1982). *Bahíyyih Khánum*. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19242/pg19242-images.html