|  | 54: The letter that you wrote in your burning ... | 
	| 1 | The letter that you wrote in your burning grief, on the passing of the world's Beloved, the Orb 
of the Covenant--wrote with weeping eyes and a 
heart afire, has come.  Once again, it brings back the 
full force of this calamity, and renews our mourning.  
This was the most ruinous of disasters, the 
most dreaded of ordeals, the most hurtful of misfortunes.  
It was an earthquake that shook the pillars of 
the world; it caused a tumult and an uproar among 
the dwellers of earth and heaven.  This terrible 
separation came upon us as an inescapable trial and a 
dismal decree.  It destroyed all hopes of happiness, 
and all joy perished.  By this departure, the sparkling 
stars were dimmed, and the heavens of mystic 
meaning split apart.  It set the skies on fire, it 
 
scorched the seven spheres.  From this departure, 
sorrow enveloped all mankind, it brought pain and 
tears to all the peoples of the earth.  The lightning 
bolt of it consumed the world and struck the hearts 
of its inhabitants, so that they put on sackcloth and 
poured ashes on their heads.  This disaster, coming 
all unawares, made the morning dark, and turned 
bright noon to night.  From our breasts rose burning 
sighs, and from our eyes streamed our life blood.  
Even the Concourse on High moaned and lamented, 
and their clamour rose to the highest Heaven, and 
the weeping denizens of the pavilions of glory, 
striking at their faces, raised their plaintive cries.  
Mourning, shedding tears, their garments rent, 
their heads uncovered, their feet bare, the Maids of 
Heaven hastened out of their lofty, immaculate 
chambers, and groaned and cried out. | 
	| 2 | `Abdu'l-Bahá, may our lives be sacrificed for His    
sacred dust, that peerless Beloved of the world, 
from the day that Bahá'u'lláh ascended until the 
hour of His own spotless soul's departure to the 
kingdom of light and the realm beyond, had neither 
a quiet night's rest nor a peaceful day, for thirty 
years.  At all times His heart wept and sorrowed, and 
in the dark of the night from His anguished breast 
rose burning sighs, sorely wounded as He was by 
the arrows of the opposers and the rebellious.  Then 
at first light, He would lift up His wondrous, 
melodious voice and commune with the dwellers in 
the high mansions of Heaven. | 
	| 3 | He would face the storms of tribulation with a 
 
heart full of fervour and love; He would breast the 
waves of calamities and oncoming ordeals with 
overflowing joy.  With the balm of His loving-kindness, 
He would remedy unhealing wounds, and 
the medicine of His unending grace was a cure for 
mortal ills.  Through His tenderness and care the 
sorrowful found comfort, and through His Words 
the despairing received the blissful consolation of 
their incomparable Lord.  He would hearten the 
despised and the rejected with outpourings of grace. | 
	| 4 | In the pathway of Bahá'u'lláh, He made His 
holy breast a shield to bear adversities, made His 
beauteous face a target for the blows that rained 
upon Him from all sides.  He, the Wronged One of 
the world, was compassed about by rebel hosts; the 
armies of treachery assailed Him from every direction.  
The disaffected were not remiss in their cruelty 
and aggression; never once did that arrogant crew 
fail to spread a calumny or to show their opposition 
and their malice.  At every moment, they inflicted 
wounds upon Him, injured Him, brought fresh 
grief to His heart.  Their sole aim was to bring down 
the structure of the Holy Faith and to destroy its 
very base and foundation.  They did all in their  
power to split the Bahá'í community, and in their 
strivings to shatter the union of the believers, they 
neglected nothing.  They joined hands with every 
enemy of the Faith, became boon companions of all 
who betrayed it.  There was no mischief, no plot, no 
slander, no aspersion, that they would not allow 
 
themselves, no individual so vile that they would 
not cleave to him. | 
	| 5 | And thus, with all His own ordeals and cares, and 
banished from His home, He Whom the world 
wronged devoted Himself to counselling and nurturing 
the people with the utmost loving-kindness, 
divinely admonishing them, leading and guiding 
them at all times to complete and utter steadfastness 
in the Cause of God. | 
	| 6 | From one direction He would ward off the 
assaults of the nations, from another He would hold 
back the people of hatred from tormenting the 
believers.  Now He would scatter the waverers' 
clouds of doubt, again He would demonstrate the 
truth of the clear and manifest Verses, and at all 
times and seasons He would guard the Cause of God 
with His very life, and protect its Law. | 
	| 7 | His fundamental purpose in enduring that continual 
toil and pain, and bearing those calamities, 
was to safeguard the divine and all-embracing 
Word, to shelter the tree of unity, to educate persons 
of capacity, to refine those who were pure in heart, 
and to transform the hearts of the receptive, to 
expound the mysteries of God and illumine the 
minds of the spiritual. | 
	| 8 | All praise be to Bahá'u'lláh!  The meaning of 
those bounties became apparent and the splendour 
of those bestowals was made manifest:  that conclusive 
Text, the Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá, 
was given us, and what had been hidden at the 
 
beginning was made known at the end.  His infinite 
grace became clearly manifest, and with His own 
mighty pen He made a perfect Covenant, naming 
Shoghi Effendi the Chosen Branch and Guardian 
of the Faith.  Thus, by God's bounty, what had been 
a concealed mystery and a well-guarded secret, was 
at last made plain. | 
	| 9 | This greatest of bestowals came as a lightning-flash 
of glory to the righteous, but to those evil ones 
who broke the Covenant, it was the thunderbolt of 
God's avenging wrath. |