Dear Bahá'í Friends,
We have just witnessed the dedication of the Mother Temple
of Europe -- a project of untold significance and tremendous potential for the
spread of the light of God's Faith in that Continent. One of the major
achievements called for by our beloved Guardian at the outset of the Ten Year
Crusade, this Mashriqu'l-Adhkar was triumphantly raised during its closing
years as the fruit of long and arduous labours in the face of determined
opposition and upon the sacrificial gifts of believers from all parts of the
world. Now dedicated in the opening months of the Nine Year Plan, it forms a
striking link between these two great crusades, demonstrating afresh the
organic progress of the Cause whereby the efforts exerted in one period bear
fruit in the next, which in turn endow the Bahá'í Community with new and
greater capacities for the winning of still greater victories.
You are now gathered in this Conference to deliberate on
ways and means of accomplishing the goals which are set before you. Let every
believer, as he considers in detail these various goals, bear in mind four
supreme objectives: to carry the Message of Bahá'u'lláh to every stratum of
society, not only in the towns and cities but also in the villages and country
districts where the virus of materialism has had much less effect on the lives
of men; to take urgent, wise and well-considered steps to spread the Faith to
those countries of Eastern Europe in which it has not yet become established;
to reinforce strongly the heroic band of pioneers in the islands of the
Mediterranean and the North Sea -- islands which are to play such an important
role in the awakening of the entire continent -- as well as to prosecute
energetically the goals you are called upon to achieve in other continents and
oceans; and to foster the co-operation between National Communities and between
National Spiritual Assemblies and the Hands of the Cause of God which has
contributed so markedly to the work of the Faith on that Continent and is so
essential for its future development.
Above all let every European Bahá'í have ever-present in his
mind that these are the five years during which Bahá'u'lláh sojourned on the soil
of that Continent a century ago. Let him resolve so to deepen his
knowledge of the Faith and so to increase his standards of self-sacrifice and
dedication to the Cause as to play his part in building a Community which will
be worthy of this supreme bounty and which will be a beacon light to the
peoples of this fear-wracked world.
In 1953 Shoghi Effendi wrote that the Continent of Europe
had "at last at this critical hour -- this great turning point in its
fortunes -- entered upon what may well be regarded as the opening phase of a
great spiritual revival that bids fair to eclipse any period in its spiritual
history." Those who have been privileged to witness the extraordinary
strengthening and consolidation of the Cause in Europe during the course of the
last eleven years are well aware of the reservoir of spiritual potential that
has been building up and the transformation of the life of the European Bahá'í
Community that has ensued. May the completion and dedication of the
Mashriqu'l-Adhkar be the signal for the unleashing of this potential, bringing
about on the European mainland and in the islands around its shores a
quickening of the process of individual conversion comparable to those events
which have transpired with such astonishing suddenness in other continents of
the globe.
The Universal House of Justice
(Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963 to
1986)
