May is a busy time for Bahá’ís with many special remembrances. This blog will focus on the passing of Bahá’u’lláh. Forty years after His Declaration in Baghdád, in April 1863, Bahá’u’lláh passed away May 29,1892 in Bahji.
During those forty years, in spite of constant privations, imprisonment, torture, and exile from Tehran, Iran to Akka, Israel, Bahá’u’lláh met with seekers, interrogators, religious and political authorities, and wrote letters to individuals and even heads of states, many, many prayers, treatises and books. His aim, to bring the Word of God to the peoples of the world and expound on the questions of faith and spirituality raised by His questioners.
The major themes of His message centred on the principle of unity on three issues. That humanity was mature enough to undertake the challenge of understanding this principle in all its complexities.
1..The Unity of God: Regardless of the name used for God or the various methods of worship, Bahá’ís believe that there is only the one God. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains, “This is the unity of God; this is oneness;… The prophets are its mirrors; its lights are revealed through them; its virtues become resplendent in them, but the Sun of Reality never descends from its own highest point and station. This is unity, oneness, sanctity; this is glorification whereby we praise and adore God.”
2..The Unity of Religion: God has revealed his light many times in order to illumine mankind in the path of evolution, in various countries and through many different prophets, masters and sages. – Abdu’l-Baha
In its affirmation of the validity of the great religions of the past, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas reiterates those eternal truths enunciated by all the Divine Messengers: the unity of God, love of one’s neighbor, and the moral purpose of earthly life. At the same time it removes those elements of past religious codes that now constitute obstacles to the emerging unification of the world and the reconstruction of human society. -Bahá’u’lláh
Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to vanish from the face of the earth, give birth to spirituality, and bring life and light to each heart….Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion. All the holy prophets were as doctors to the soul; -‘Abdu’l-Bahá
3..The Unity of Humanity: God, the Almighty, has created all mankind from the dust of earth. He has fashioned them all from the same elements; they are descended from the same race and live upon the same globe. He has created them to dwell beneath the one heaven. As members of the human family and His children He has endowed them with equal susceptibilities. …All people worship the same God and are alike His servants. – Abdu’l-Baha,
“Every human being has the right to live; they have a right to rest, and to a certain amount of well-being. As a rich man is able to live in his palace surrounded by luxury and the greatest comfort, so should a poor man be able to have the necessaries of life.” ‘-Abdu’l-Bahá
All the barriers of division have been rendered superfluous and according to Shoghi Effendi “Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family.”
Bahá’u’lláh went further and outlined a framework for the development of a global civilization which takes into account both the spiritual and material dimensions of human life.