Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf: A Compilation from Bahá’í Sacred Texts and Writings of the Guardian of the Faith and Bahíyyih Khánum’s Own Letters

1 The letter from that spiritual friend has reached the beloved Guardian, and he is aware of your bitter grieving over the calamitous news that a most glorious fruit of the Holy Tree, the Most Exalted Leaf, the Remnant of Bahá, has passed away.

This disastrous event has had an effect on the Guardian so terrible that no pen can describe it nor paper bear the words; for that bright and surpassingly fair presence, that quintessence of the perfections and attributes of God, was his close companion, and the consolation of his heart, so that his separation from her whom the world wronged, and the ascension of that loved one of the community of love, was unspeakably hard for him to bear.

She was a divine trust, a treasure of the Kingdom, and she spent all the days of her precious life as an exile and a captive, and her every priceless hour was passed under tests and afflictions and ordeals that she endured at the hands of merciless foes. From early childhood she had her share of the sufferings of Bahá’u’lláh, subjected even as He was to hardships and calamities, and she was as well the partner in sorrows and tribulations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

For her there was never a night of peaceful sleep, for her no day when she found rest, and always, like a moth, would her comely person circle about the bright candle of the Faith. The words of her mouth were ever to glorify the Abhá Beauty, her only thought and her high purpose were to proclaim the Cause of God and to protect His Law, while the 76 dearest wish of her glowing heart was to waft far and wide the sweet breathings of the Lord.

Her heavenly ways were a model for the people of Bahá, and those who dwell in the pavilions of devotion and the denizens of the Abhá Paradise found in her celestial attributes their prototype and their guide. Glory be to God, Who created her, fashioned her, called her into being, sent her forth and revealed her, whose like the eye of the world had never seen.

The Guardian sends his message of consolation to your honoured self and all the friends, and he says that it is fitting that the righteous should hold fast to the cord of resignation and acquiescence, and adorn themselves with the ornaments of faithfulness and servitude, and take for their example that priceless treasure of the Kingdom.