Dear Bahá'í friends,
As the Five Year Plan gathers momentum in all parts of the
world, with the followers of the Blessed Perfection firmly embarked on the
course that will lead to victory, the time has come for us to contemplate, in
preparation for its imminent initiation, the project which will rank as the
greatest single undertaking of that Plan, the construction of a befitting Seat
for the Universal House of Justice in the heart of God's Holy Mountain.
Nearly thirty-six years ago, after overcoming a multitude of
difficulties, the beloved Guardian succeeded in transferring to Mount Carmel
the sacred remains of the Purest Branch and Navvab, interring them in the
immediate neighbourhood of the resting-place of the Greatest Holy Leaf, and
alluded, in these words, to the "capital institutional significance"
that these events constituted in the unfoldment of the World Centre of the
Faith:
“For it must be clearly understood, nor can it be sufficiently
emphasized, that the conjunction of the resting-place of the Greatest Holy Leaf
with those of her brother and mother incalculably reinforces the spiritual
potencies of that consecrated Spot which, under the wings of the Báb's
overshadowing Sepulchre, and in the vicinity of the future Mashriqu'l-Adhkar which
will be reared on its flank, is destined to evolve into the focal centre of
those world-shaking, world-embracing, world-directing administrative
institutions, ordained by Bahá'u'lláh and anticipated by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and
which are to function in consonance with the principles that govern the twin
institutions of the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice. Then, and
then only, will this momentous prophecy which illuminates the concluding
passages of the Tablet of Carmel be fulfilled: ‘Erelong will God sail His Ark
upon thee (Carmel), and will manifest the people of Baha who have been mentioned
in the Book of Names.’”
“To attempt to visualize, even in its barest outline, the glory that must envelop these institutions, to essay even a tentative and partial description of their character or the manner of their operation, or to trace however inadequately the course of events leading to their rise and eventual establishment is far beyond my own capacity and power. Suffice it to say that at this troubled stage in world history the association of these three incomparably precious souls who, next to the three Central Figures of our Faith, tower in rank above the vast multitude of the heroes, Letters, martyrs, hands, teachers and administrators of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh, in such a potentially powerful spiritual and administrative Centre, is in itself an event which will release forces that are bound to hasten the emergence in a land which, geographically, spiritually and administratively, constitutes the heart of the entire planet, of some of the brightest gems of that World Order now shaping in the womb of this, travailing age. (Shoghi Effendi, ‘Messages to America’)
The first of the majestic edifices constituting this mighty
Centre, was the building for the International Archives of the Faith which was
completed in the summer of 1957 as one of the last major achievements of Shoghi
Effendi's Guardianship and which set the style for the remaining structures
which, as described by him, were to be raised in the course of time in the form
of a far-flung arc on the slope of Mount Carmel. In the eighteen years since
that achievement, the community of the Most Great Name has grown rapidly in
size and influence: from twenty-six National Spiritual Assemblies to one
hundred and nineteen, from some one thousand to seventeen thousand Local
Spiritual Assemblies, and from four thousand five hundred localities to over
seventy thousand, accompanied by a corresponding increase in the volume of the
work carried on at the World Centre of the Faith and in the complexity of its
institutions. It is now both necessary and possible to initiate construction of
a building that will not only serve the practical needs of a steadily
consolidating administrative centre but will, for centuries to come, stand as a
visible expression of the majesty of the divinely ordained institutions of the
Administrative Order of Bahá'u'lláh.
Faced, like the Archives Building, with stone from Italy,
and surrounded by a stately colonnade of sixty Corinthian columns, the Seat for
the Universal House of Justice will contain, in addition to the council chamber
of the House of Justice, a library, a concourse for the reception of pilgrims
and dignitaries, storage vaults with air purification for the preservation of
original Tablets and other precious documents, accommodation for the
secretariat and the many ancillary services that will be required. Conceived in
a style of enduring beauty and majesty, and faced with stone that will weather
the centuries, the building in its interior arrangements will be very simple
and capable of adaptation in the generations ahead to whatever technological
advances will be made by the rapid growth of human knowledge.
The erection of this building which, comprising five and a
half stories, far surpasses in size and complexity any building at present in
existence at the World Centre presents a major challenge to the Bahá'í
community, whose resources are already all too meagre in relation to the great
tasks that lie before it. But the spirit of sacrifice has been the hallmark of
the followers of Bahá'u'lláh of every race and clime and as they unite to raise
this second of the great edifices of the Administrative Centre of their Faith
they will rejoice at having the inestimable privilege of taking part in a
"vast and irresistible process" which Shoghi Effendi stated is "unexampled
in the spiritual history of mankind," a process "which will
synchronize with two no less significant developments -- the establishment of
the Lesser Peace and the evolution of Bahá'í national and local institutions --
the one outside and the other within the Bahá'í world -- will attain its final
consummation, in the Golden Age of the Faith, through the raising of the
standard of the Most Great Peace, and the emergence, in the plenitude of its
power and glory, of the focal Centre of the agencies constituting the World
Order of Bahá'u'lláh."
The Universal House of Justice
(Messages from the Universal House of justice, 1963 to 1986)
