Messages to America

I am thrilled with admiration as I contemplate, at this advanced stage in the unfoldment of the Seven Year Plan, the vastness of the field already covered by the pioneer activities of its stalwart and valiant prosecutors. The heights of heroic self-sacrifice to which they have attained, the depths of faith and devotion they have plumbed in the course of their ceaseless exertions are no less noteworthy than the immensity of the task they have already performed. An effort so prodigious, a mission so sublime, a solidarity so truly remarkable, an achievement, which in its scope and quality, stands unparalleled in American Bahá’í history, provide a befitting climax to the century old record of magnificent accomplishments associated with the rise and progress of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Such a glorious century, so unique in the annals of mankind’s spiritual history, is, however, not yet completed. The gigantic enterprises which the American believers are pledged to consummate are as yet but partially concluded. The remaining two years must witness an intensification of Bahá’í activity, throughout the entire Western Hemisphere on such a scale as to eclipse the splendor of all past achievements, and worthily crown this initial phase in the progressive evolution of the Divine Plan. An unprecedented multiplication in the number of pioneer teachers and settlers; an unexampled flow of material resources for their maintenance and the extension of their labors; a still wider dissemination of Bahá’í literature, to aid and support them in their presentation of the Faith to Latin American peoples; an immediate increase in the number of groups and Assemblies in the States and Provinces of North America; an increased awareness on the part of all believers, whether in the North or in the South, whether newly enrolled or of old standing in the Faith, that every one of them shares, vitally and directly and without any exception, in the responsibility for the successful prosecution of the Plan; a still firmer resolution not to allow a world-convulsing conflict, with its attendant miseries, perils, dislocations, and anxieties, to deflect them from their course or distract their attention; these are the crying needs of this critical, this challenging, this swiftly passing hour; to exploit its possibilities, to meet 58 its challenge, to grasp its implications, is the manifest, the inescapable and urgent duty of every member of the Bahá’í communities now laboring so assiduously in the Western Hemisphere. May the cumulative effect of their concentrated and sustained labors shed further lustre on the concluding years of this, the first century of the Bahá’í Era.

August 15, 1942