Messages to the Bahá’í World: 1950–1957

Announce to believers, through all National Assemblies, termination initial stage of construction of domed structure designed to embellish and preserve the Báb’s sepulcher on Mount Carmel.

The two-year enterprise launched on the eve of the gravest turmoil rocking the Holy Land in modern times, involving the expenditure of a quarter of a million dollars, necessitating the transportation and placing of almost eight hundred tons of stone and marble mosaic, was consummated on the eve of the Centenary of 6 His martyrdom. My soul is thrilled in contemplation of the rising edifice, the beauty of its design, the majesty of its proportions, the loveliness of its surroundings, the historic associations of the site it occupies, the sacredness of the Sanctuary it envelops, the transcendent holiness of the Treasure it enshrines.

My gratitude is deepened by the miraculous recovery of its gifted architect, Sutherland Maxwell, whose illness was pronounced hopeless by physicians. I acknowledge the valuable service rendered by Ugo Giachery, through his supervision of the work of shipment of consignments to Haifa.

The hour is ripe to undertake the preliminaries for the erection of the octagonal first unit of the superstructure, another milestone in the process set in motion sixty years ago by Bahá’u’lláh’s visit to Mount Carmel. This process which gathered momentum through the transportation of His Holiness, the Báb’s remains to the Holy Land after fifty years’ concealment, through the erection of the sanctuary by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the darkest years of His Ministry, through the entombment of the remains by Him on the morrow of His forty year incarceration, through the commencement of the construction of the arcade on the fortieth anniversary of the interment of the Holy Dust, through the termination of the parapet on the eve of the Centenary of the Báb’s martyrdom, must be accelerated through the erection of the dome, attaining consummation through the emergence of the institutions of the world administrative center of the Faith in the vicinity of its world spiritual Center, signalizing the sailing of the Divine Ark on God’s Mountain, prophesied in the Tablet of Carmel.

I appeal to entire body of believers to seize this priceless opportunity to stimulate the unfoldment of this process through generous, sustained contributions for the furtherance of an enterprise transcending any national institution whether Hazírá or Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, reared in the past or in process of construction. The hour is propitious, particularly during the three year interval separating the Centennials of the Báb’s martyrdom and the birth of Bahá’u’lláh’s Mission, coinciding with the hundredth anniversary of the greatest holocaust in the history of the Faith, to repay part of the infinite debt of gratitude owed its martyrs, through hastening the conclusion of the holiest enterprise since the dawn of the Revelation, interwoven with the ministries of Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, linking the Heroic and Formative Ages of the Bahá’í Dispensation, cementing the ties binding the communities of the East 7 and West with the World Center of the Faith and shedding imperishable luster on the first and second centuries of the Bahá’í Era, which posterity will hail as the most befitting tribute to the One Who made the most precious sacrifice for the sake of the most sublime Faith in mankind’s spiritual history.