Recall with feelings of profound emotion, as mid-August approaches, the
distressing circumstances attending the dastardly act which, one hundred
years ago, precipitated the chain of calamitous events, unparalleled in
scope and severity in the annals of the Faith of Baha'u'llah and
constituting, next to the martyrdom of its Herald, the darkest, bloodiest
and most tragic episode of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Dispensation.
Invite members of all communities of the Baha'i World, standing at the
threshold of the Holy Year to call to mind the manifold tribulations
afflicting God's infant Faith immediately preceding, accompanying and
following the imprisonment of the Author of the Baha'i Revelation in the
Siyah-_Ch_al in Tihran, the somber scene of the birth of His glorious
mission. Urge them to remember the multitude of barbarous acts in which
king, government, people and ecclesiastics participated; to ponder the
ferocious character of the persecutions; and to meditate upon the vastness
of their range as well as their far-reaching consequences. Request them to
dwell particularly upon the seeming helplessness of God's struggling Faith
and direct special attention to the ordeals undergone by Baha'u'llah, its
sole surviving pillar, subsequent to the birth of His Mission, His
ultimate banishment, and culminating in His incarceration in the Holy Land
and in the fulfilment of age-long prophecies.
Address to them, as well as to their national representatives, my last
appeal here at the commencement of the forthcoming Centenary Celebrations
to exert in the course of the critical, fleeting months ahead, one final,
supreme effort to ensure complete, total success of all plans formulated
by National Assemblies in every continent of the globe, culminating in the
Ridvan period, falling in the middle and marking the central features of
the celebrations of the Holy Year.
Supplicating God's bountiful blessings on each and every national
enterprise, the triumphant consummation of which will be regarded by
posterity as a befitting tribute paid by their participants to the
immortal memory of the unexampled heroism of the dawn-breakers of the
Apostolic Age of the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah and will crown the
festivities commemorating the centenary of the birth of His Mission and
will constitute a worthy prelude to the launching of the global spiritual
crusade destined to culminate in the one hundredth anniversary of the
formal assumption by the Author of the Baha'i Revelation of His Prophetic
Office, and to diffuse the radiance of His Faith over the face of the
entire planet.
Share message with all National Assemblies.
--Shoghi
[Cablegram, August 5, 1952]