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Messages to Canada

  • Author:

  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • Bahá’í Canada Publications
  • Pages:
  • 276
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Pages xv-xviii

Foreword to the 1965 edition
Few tasks have given such pleasure to the National Spiritual Assembly as the publication of this book. The thirty messages which it contains are collated from letters and cablegrams sent to the Canadian Bahá’í community by Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Cause. They span virtually the entire thirty-six years of his ministry, but the reader will not fail to note that apart from the first letter (written in January 1923, shortly after Shoghi Effendi assumed his responsibilities at the World Centre) the messages are concentrated in the nine years from 1948 to 1957. The explanation lies, of course, in the fact that prior to April 1948, Canadian and American Bahá’ís were members of a single community embracing the two countries. The great body of messages addressed to that community have found permanence in several other volumes,1 and are now a part of the heritage of the entire Bahá’í world. The Canadian National Spiritual Assembly has long desired to contribute to that inheritance this final share of the trust left to it by the Guardian. No more fitting occasion could be found than the inauguration of the first of the global plans designed by the Universal House of Justice and inspired by just such undertakings as form the subject of much of this book.
For those believers who were members of the Faith before November 1957, this book will have a special dimension. For them, the messages will always be letters, inseparable in memory from climactic moments at conventions, conferences, and assembly meetings; for some among them, they will be even more closely interwoven with memories of the personal decisions which helped to translate the plans of the messages into the reality of a world-wide community; for a fortunate few, these letters will speak with an unforgettable voice and face and hands remembered from all too brief evenings at the dinner table in Haifa. The messages have significance, however, far beyond the circumstances in which they were issued. Perhaps the most obvious, to a Canadian, is the unique contribution which they make to the history of the Cause in this country. As a nation, Canada has not had a strong sense of mission or identity, and its history has frequently appeared to be a sequence of reactions to events occurring in other countries. For Canadian Bahá’ís, however, the messages of Shoghi Effendi and the statements of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on which they are based provide glimpses of the foundations of their community and of its mission in the world which are the very essence of history. Shoghi Effendi speaks in moving language of the promises of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; of the role of the Canadian community as “co-heir” with the American believers to the Tablets of the Divine Plan; of the “imperishable record of international service” associated with such names as May Maxwell and Sutherland Maxwell, Marion Jack, Fred Schopflocher, Louis Bourgeois, and Rúhíyyih Khánum, “my helpmate, my shield ... my tireless collaborator”; of the “initiation of [Canada’s] glorious mission, far beyond the borders of the Dominion”; of the significance of the 1949 Act of Parliament incorporating the National Spiritual Assembly, a “magnificent victory unique annals East West”; and of the special role which the community must play in the establishment of the Faith among aboriginal peoples and particularly among the Eskimos.
Ultimately, however, the messages are the property of the Bahá’í world community. On the one hand, they provide authoritative guidance for both individuals and assemblies on issues which in several instances may have been dealt with nowhere else. On the other, they speak in a spirit of understanding which will infinitely reward any effort to appreciate and express it. Local assemblies, like national assemblies, will benefit from a study of the Guardian’s repeated urging that we “avoid ... rules and regulations” as stifling to “the spirit of the Cause”, and deal instead with each case on its individual merits in the light of the principles of the Faith. The individual believer will be interested in the reflection in several of the letters of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s appeal that we refrain from moral judgements on other people. Assemblies and individuals alike will not fail to remark the extreme caution which the Guardian counsels us to use in the disciplinary functions of an administrative body. Finally, the letters provide a remarkable glimpse into the world of the spirit in such passages as those in which the Guardian stresses the long term significance of the goals established in the remote and inhospitable regions of Canada’s northland.
In one of the most challenging passages of this book, Shoghi Effendi writes: “Above all, the utmost endeavour should be exerted by your Assembly to familiarize the newly enrolled believers with the fundamental and spiritual verities of the Faith, and with the origins, the aims and purposes, as well as the processes of a divinely appointed Administrative Order.... For as the body of the avowed supporters of the Faith is enlarged ... a parallel progress must be achieved, if the fruits already garnered are to endure, in the spiritual quickening of its members and the deepening of their inner life.”
There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who has read them that these messages themselves provide a priceless opportunity for the spiritual quickening to which their author refers. They constitute a part of that imperishable legacy which, without a written Will, the Guardian of the Cause has left to the entire world, a legacy which will continue to enrich future generations of Bahá’ís throughout the centuries of this Dispensation.

National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada

Ridván, 1964
1.Bahá’í Administration, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, The Advent of Divine Justice, The Promised Day is Come, Messages to America  [ Back To Reference]