Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
Loading…
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
72 stories on this theme.
Leroy Ioas recalls that until Shoghi Effendi passed away in England he was sending cables about work to finish before his return, which suggests he did not expect to die.
In May 1940 the Guardian, Rúḥíyyih Khánum and her father tried to reach England from Italy. A British Consul who remembered ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stamped their passport, and after anxious days at St Malo they sailed for Southampton.
Mary Maxwell of Montreal married Shoghi Effendi on 25 March 1937 in a simple, private wedding; as Rúḥíyyih Khánum she later served as a Hand of the Cause and travelled to 185 countries and territories.
This servant, after that grievous event and great calamity, the ascension of His Holiness ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the Abhá Kingdom …
We thank you most sincerely for your kind letters of sympathy, and we appreciate your loving Messages, which are as comforting balm to our wounded hearts.
In this day, those holy souls are divinely confirmed who stand firm in the most sacred Cause of the Abhá Beauty, those who are steadfast, and loyal to the Covenant and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
It is not unknown to those who stand firm in the Covenant and Testament of God that the centre of violation and his associates, from the day of the ascension of the Ancient Beauty, may His Great Name be ever exalted …
This dire calamity, this great affliction, the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, may our lives be sacrificed for His meekness, has shaken us to the very depths.
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 …
O faithful servant of the Best-Beloved, the Most Glorious! O steadfast friend, flourishing in the garden of His luminous Beauty!
O God, my God! Thou seest me immersed in the depths of grief, drowned in my sorrow, my heart on fire with the agony of parting, my inmost self aflame with longing.
The good news that the Word of God is being raised up, and His Cause glorified, and that His friends, on fire with love for Him, are arising to spread His sweet savours abroad—is coming in steadily from every quarter of the globe.
It is clear how that most dire of calamities, that most great disaster which was the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, may our souls be sacrificed for His meekness, has set our hearts on fire and dissolved our very limbs and members in grief.
The good news has come that the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, may our lives be sacrificed for His meekness, has been read at the meetings of the friends …
In this noblest of all ages the Sun of grace and loving-kindness has shone out from the divine day-spring with such resplendent glory and is casting His beams so bright and far …
The purport of your letter is highly indicative of your steadfastness in His Cause, of your unswerving constancy in the Covenant, of having set your face toward Shoghi Effendi, the authorized Point to whom all must turn …
A physician treats every illness with a certain remedy and to every painful sore he applies a specially prepared compound.
The letter that you wrote in your burning grief, on the passing of the world’s Beloved, the Orb of the Covenant—wrote with weeping eyes and a heart afire, has come.
Although the ascension of the beloved Centre of the Covenant was the ultimate calamity, the severest of ordeals, and the fire of that bereavement consumed our hearts and souls …
You have offered up thanks to the Lord for appointing the Centre of His Cause and the Guardian of His Covenant, and have voiced your gratitude and expressed your spiritual sentiments, for this favour and grace.
It has been demonstrated time and time again that whatever comes to pass only enhances the glory of God’s Faith, and further proclaims His Word.
All praise to the beloved Abhá Beauty, that those nightingales of the gardens of knowledge, those doves of the fragrant bowers of certitude, are singing the holy verses on the boughs of grace and bounty …
The Pen of the divine Ordainer has so decreed that this house of sorrows should be encompassed by unending calamity and pain.
‘O God, My God! Thou hast lighted the lamp of Thy Cause with the oil of wisdom; protect it from contrary winds.
The tongue of this lowly and grief-stricken maidservant is powerless to praise those loved ones of God, and the words uttered by her are wholly inadequate to pay a worthy tribute to the staunch firmness and constancy …
The question of Avárih has surely come to your attention.
It is a very long time since we have had any news from you and we are quite longing to have one of your interesting and beautiful letters, that brings us always comfort because of your sincerity, your love for the Cause and your constant energy in the work for the Cause.
Your short and loving note of June 25th has been received.
Your charming letter of June 20th has arrived and with it the spiritual waves of your love and devotion to the welfare of the Cause of God and to the prosperity of the dear friends throughout America.
Your numerous letters written to the beloved Guardian and myself have all arrived and brought with them the sweet perfume of your devotion, sincerity, strong faith and active and beautiful services you are inexhaustibly rendering to the Cause of God.
Under the inspired guidance of Shoghi Effendi the Bahá’í Cause grew steadily in size and in the establishment of its Administrative Order, so that by 1951 there were eleven functioning National Spiritual Assemblies.
During His own lifetime Bahá’u’lláh appointed a few tried and trusted friends to assist in directing and promoting the work of the Movement, and gave them the title of Ayadiyi-Amru’lláh (lit.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá appointed His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi, to the responsible position of “Guardian of the Cause” (Valiyy-i-Amru’lláh).
Shoghi Effendi told how a coachman at Ramleh demanded an exorbitant fare from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and pulled Him roughly by His sash. The Master stayed calm, refused to give in, and paid exactly what He owed, without the tip.
In 1920, while Shoghi Effendi was resting in Paris on his way to England, the pilgrim Núru’d-Dín Mumtází met him at a gathering, and Shoghi Effendi later visited his party and chanted a prayer for their pilgrimage.
On her first pilgrimage in 1923, the twelve-year-old Mary Maxwell stood guard at the door of her sleeping mother, May Maxwell, only to learn that the visitor she had challenged was Shoghi Effendi.
In February 1941, in the middle of the Second World War, ‘Alí-Akbar Furútan and his family travelled from Iran to Haifa. He recalls how Shoghi Effendi welcomed them, encouraged the persecuted Iranian believers and spoke about the station of Islam.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes how, in 1922–24, Shoghi Effendi wrestled with doubts about his own worthiness to succeed ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as his letters from those years reveal.
During the Second World War the Guardian wrote God Passes By, his review of the first Bahá'í century, racing to finish it in time for the Centenary. Rúhíyyih Khánum, who proofread it with him late into the night, recorded what the work cost him.
In 1952 Shoghi Effendi directed the levelling of land around the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, changed his design after viewing it from a ruined building's roof, and then moved his meetings to the edge of the new garden out of respect for the Shrine.
On a summer rest-cure, and again in London in the last days of his life, Shoghi Effendi worked for hours on his own maps of the Ten Year Crusade, filling in their details by hand.
In November 1921 Shoghi Effendi, a student at Oxford, learned in London that 'Abdu'l-Bahá had passed away. In January 1922 the Master's Will was read, naming him Guardian of the Cause of God.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum found almost no mention of the Second World War in her diaries, though it threatened the World Centre and the Guardian himself. She saw that silence as a measure of the pressures he carried in those years.
Shoghi Effendi was a student in England when 'Abdu'l-Bahá passed away. He hurried home to Haifa, and his grandfather's Will named him Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith.
Shoghi Effendi drew a great curving line on Mount Carmel where, one day, the buildings of the Bahá'í World Centre would stand. He lived to see only the first of them.
To design the dome and arcade of the Shrine of the Báb, Shoghi Effendi turned to a Canadian architect who was also his father-in-law, William Sutherland Maxwell.
In London in 1957, Shoghi Effendi fell ill with the flu, kept working until he had finished his last map, and passed away peacefully in his sleep.
Letters poured in to Shoghi Effendi from all over the world. He decided to keep writing back to individual believers, and he wrote and typed his own books himself.
In 'Akká a small boy, Shoghi, walked up to his grandfather 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who greeted him with a quiet nod; the boy kissed the hem of His robe and ran off to play.
Soon after he became Guardian, Shoghi Effendi went away for a time to gather his strength, walking for long hours, usually alone, in the mountains of Switzerland, while the Greatest Holy Leaf looked after the Faith.
In 1921 Shoghi Effendi, a student in England, walked into an office in London and read a cable on the desk telling of the passing of his grandfather, 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
'Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, written entirely in His own hand in three parts, was read aloud in January 1922. It named Shoghi Effendi the Guardian of the Cause of God and provided for the Universal House of Justice.
In His Will 'Abdu'l-Bahá named His grandson Shoghi Effendi "the sign of God, the chosen branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God." Shoghi Effendi asked the believers to call him only by the name his Grandfather had used.
Shoghi Effendi went to Oxford to perfect his English for translating the sacred Writings. In 1935 he published Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, a selection of passages he had translated, which Professor Norman Bentwich and Queen Marie of Romania, among others, praised.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes how Shoghi Effendi drew an arc on Mount Carmel above the graves of the Greatest Holy Leaf, her mother and her brother, as the site for the Faith's future administrative buildings.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum recalls her marriage to Shoghi Effendi on 25 March 1937: a visit to the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, a simple ceremony in the room of the Greatest Holy Leaf, and no celebration at all.
Toward the end of 1942 Shoghi Effendi asked his father-in-law, the Canadian architect William Sutherland Maxwell, to design the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb. Built with stone cut in Italy, it was completed in 1953.
While in London in the autumn of 1957, Shoghi Effendi fell ill with Asiatic influenza, kept working on his last map, and died in his sleep early on 4 November. He was buried near London on 9 November.
Faced with a flood of letters from all over the world, Shoghi Effendi chose to keep answering individual believers. He kept copies of his cables to the end and typed his own manuscripts with two fingers.
In 1920 Shoghi Effendi went to Balliol College, Oxford, to perfect his English so that he could translate the sacred writings. His studies ended in November 1921 with the news of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's passing.
Unhappy at school in Haifa and Beirut, the young Shoghi Effendi was moved by 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the Syrian Protestant College, where he aimed all his studies at serving the Master and translating His letters into English.
In 'Akká in 1899 the American pilgrim Ella Goodall Cooper watched the small Shoghi Effendi walk up to 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who greeted him with a silent nod; the boy kissed the hem of His robe and ran off to play.
In November 1921 Shoghi Effendi, a student at Oxford, learned from a cable in a London office that 'Abdu'l-Bahá had passed away; back in Haifa, the Master's Will told him he had been appointed Guardian.
Overwhelmed by grief and by his appointment as Guardian, Shoghi Effendi left Haifa in April 1922 with the Greatest Holy Leaf in charge, and in the early years of his ministry sought healing in long, solitary walks in the Swiss mountains.
Shoghi Effendi made public the Ten Year Crusade at the start of the Holy Year in 1952 and launched it at four Intercontinental Teaching Conferences in 1953; in its first year one hundred new territories were opened to the Faith.
On 29 November 1921 Shoghi Effendi, a student at Oxford, learned of the passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá by reading the cable that lay open on a desk in Wellesley Tudor Pole's London office.
Shoghi Effendi spent eight months translating the first part of Nabíl's narrative and almost two years preparing The Dawn-Breakers, published in 1932, which deeply stirred the Bahá'ís of the West.
Rúḥíyyih Khánum records that early in his ministry Shoghi Effendi sent the American believers his revised translation of The Hidden Words, and describes the long study of English behind his translations.
Back from Haifa in the spring of 1922, Mountfort Mills told the American Bahá'ís at their convention about meeting Shoghi Effendi, the young Guardian appointed in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Will.
Leroy Ioas recalls how Shoghi Effendi gave the aged Corinne True a purse once used by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, with a gold coin inside bearing the year of her first visit to the Master.
A Canadian pilgrim asked whether translators could replace the nightingale and the rose for readers in the Arctic; Shoghi Effendi said the sacred texts must be translated exactly, then gave her attar of rose for the friends in Canada and for the Inuit.
Hand of the Cause Leroy Ioas recalls the contrast between Shoghi Effendi's slight, refined frame and the power with which he spoke, and how closely the Guardian resembled 'Abdu'l-Bahá.