|
<<previous |
next>> |
|
|
Citadel of Faith
|
Page 45
|
|
No Sacrifice Too Great
| |
1 |
The gravity of the emergency facing the North American believers
is unprecedented since the initiation of the Divine Plan and unparalleled
in the history of the American Bahá'í Community since `Abdu'l-Bahá's
passing. No obstacle is insuperable, no sacrifice too great for
attainment of supremely important objective. The eyes of her sister
communities in every continent of the globe and of her daughter
communities of Latin America, handicapped by a variety of adverse
circumstances, are fixed upon the community of followers of
Bahá'u'lláh in North American continent who are enjoying the blessings
of internal peace, adequate resources, administrative experience
and organizing ability for their divinely appointed mission, expecting
them to arise and avert the reverse which would mar the splendor of
their record of unexampled stewardship. I am moved to plead, at this
eleventh hour, that the rank and file of the community, particularly the
members resident in long-established leading strongholds of the
Faith--New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington
--issue forth unhesitatingly, determinedly, sacrifice every interest,
assume positions in the forefront of the struggle and emulate in
the course of the first decade of second Bahá'í century, opening years
of the second epoch of Formative Age of the Faith, exploits of their
spiritual progenitors, the dawn-breakers of the Heroic Age, which
immortalized the dawn of the first Bahá'í century. The immediate
fortunes of the Plan are precariously hanging in the balance. The three
months' interval is swiftly running out. My heart aches at contemplation
of the possibility of failure of the stalwart community to rise to the
heights of the occasion. I refuse to believe that its members, invested
with unique apostolic mission of `Abdu'l-Bahá, will shrink from meeting
the most challenging requirement of the present hour.
[February 1, 1948]
| |
|
|
|