Jun 21, 2015

Extent of his suffering

[1939]: "The Master gave us a Trust. That Trust is the Guardian. He said 'that no dust of despondency may stain his radiant nature.' Dust of despondency! He has been so abused and tortured by those who should have sustained and encouraged him that his radiant nature is as rare as rare can be now. Sometimes I see it like a sun in his dear face shining through -- he suffers so much that many times he has to go to bed because of it, literally prostrated!" 
- Ruhiyyih Khanum  (Entry from her diary, ‘The Priceless Pearl’)

Jun 14, 2015

The prayer that the Guardian requested all believers to offer on his behalf

I cherish the hope that, from now on the Beloved may bestow upon me all the strength and vigour that will enable me to pursue over a long and unbroken period of strenuous labour the supreme task of achieving, in collaboration with the friends in every land, the speedy triumph of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh. This is the prayer I earnestly request all my fellow brethren and sisters in the Faith to offer on my behalf. 
- Shoghi Effendi  (From a message dated December 2, 1923; ‘Messages to Australia and New Zealand’)

Jun 1, 2015

Things the Guardian suffered from

The news of dear Martha Root's death was not unexpected as the Guardian had been sent the doctor's reports which were pretty hopeless. These are not the things which burden him. He knew she could not live forever! Like the Master, a breath of violation or the thought that anyone may be even a potential violator is, one might say, death to him! I often think it profoundly organic, the sense that the Center of the Cause has for this most venomous disease. Hence the importance he attaches to your vigilance in protecting the Faith and being on the look out - the duty indeed of every Baha'i. Disobedience, an incorrect attitude towards the fundamentals of the Cause, failure to push on the teaching and temple work, these are the things he suffers from and not all the things the friends think he suffers from. He does not suffer over the deaths of others the way the Master did. He is here to judge and not to pity. You remember the Master said one bad apple would decay a whole barrel of good ones? The protection of the Faith is what burns into him!

Everyone from the center outwards to the furthest point, has failed befittingly to heed ‘Abdu’l-Baha's injunction ‘that no dust of despondency may stain his radiant nature . . .’. I sometimes feel desperate. I feel if I could only bring to him the living sense of the love of the friends - why don't they pour their love on him? Don't they realize how alone he is! How isolated, how heavily burdened?  
- Ruhiyyih Khanum  (From a letter to her parents, dated mid-October 1939, ‘The Maxwells of Montreal, vol. 2’)