March 21

This is a Missive from the Primal Point[1] unto them that have believed in God, the One, the Peerless, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, wherein He addresseth those among the people of the Bayán who have vacillated in this Cause, that haply they may apprehend the wondrous words of God and forsake the couch of heedlessness in this shining and resplendent morn.

Say: We, verily, bid you in Our Book not to advance yourselves before those from whose ranks would appear He Who is the Beloved of every understanding heart and the Object of the adoration of the denizens of earth and heaven. Moreover, We commanded you, should ye attain the presence of God, to stand before Him and to utter on My behalf these mighty and exalted words: “Upon Thee, O Glory of God, and upon Thy kinfolk, be the remembrance of God and the praise of all things at every moment before and after Hín.”[2] We honoured the people of the Bayán with these words, that they might ascend thereby unto the heights of holiness and be numbered with the blest. Yet they have so utterly forsaken Our injunction that not a single one among them hath appeared in His presence as We had commanded in Our Tablets. Nay rather, from every side they have hurled at Him the darts of malice. And at this, I, and the denizens of the Kingdom of grandeur, and beyond them the Faithful Spirit, have wept sore. 

- Bahá’u’lláh  (From a Tablet; Baha'u'llah speaks in the voice of the Báb; ‘Days of Remembrance’)

[1] The Báb

[2] The numerical value of the letters of the word Hín is 68. “After Hín” is thus an allusion to the year after A.H. 1268, which was 1269 (A.D. 1852–3), the year that marked the birth of the Bahá’í Revelation.

March 20

Praised be Thou, O my God, that Thou hast ordained Naw-Rúz as a festival unto those who have observed the Fast for love of Thee and abstained from all that is abhorrent unto Thee. Grant, O my Lord, that the fire of Thy love and the heat produced by the Fast enjoined by Thee may inflame them in Thy Cause, and make them to be occupied with Thy praise and with remembrance of Thee. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)

March 19

I beseech Thee, O God of bounty and King of all created things, to guard Thy servants from the imaginations which their hearts may devise. Raise them up, then, to such heights that their footsteps may slip not in the face of the evidences of Thy handiwork, which the manifold exigencies of Thy wisdom have ordained, and whose secrets Thou hast hid from the face of Thy people and Thy creatures. Withhold them not, O my Lord, from the ocean of Thy knowledge, neither do Thou deprive them of what Thou didst destine for such of Thy chosen ones as have near access to Thee, and those of Thy trusted ones as are wholly devoted to Thy Self. Supply them, then, from Thy sea of certainty with what will calm the agitation of their hearts. Turn, O Lord my God, the darkness of their fancies into the brightness of certitude, and cause them to arise, and to walk steadfastly in Thy straight Path, that haply Thy Book may not hinder them from recognizing Him Who is its Revealer, and Thy names from acknowledging the One Who is their Creator, and their Provider, and their Origin, and their King, and their Begetter, and their Destroyer, and their Glorifier, and their Abaser, and their Governor, and the Sovereign Protector of their Bearers. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah’)

March 18

Say: His [Baha’u’llah’s] beauty is in truth My beauty, and His Self is Mine own Self, and all that We revealed in the Bayán is for the sake of His wondrous and resistless Cause. Fear ye God, and dispute not with the One Whose advent We heralded and Whose Revelation We announced unto you. I established a covenant with you concerning His mission ere I covenanted with you regarding Mine own, and unto this all things bear witness, even if ye were to deny it. By the righteousness of God! Through but a single one of His melodies the realities of all things were reborn, and through another the hearts of His favoured ones were filled with rapture. Take heed lest anything debar you from Him Whose presence is the same as Mine own. He sacrificed Himself in My path even as I sacrificed Myself in His path for the love of His glorious and incomparable beauty. 

- Bahá’u’lláh  (From a Tablet; Baha'u'llah speaks in the voice of the Báb, ‘Days of Remembrance’)

March 17

I implore Thee, O my God, by Thy name whereby all the kindreds of the earth have wailed, except such as Thou hast safeguarded with Thine unerring protection and sheltered beneath the shadow of Thy transcendent mercy, to make us so firm in Thy Cause and steadfast in Thy love that were Thy servants to rise up against Thee and Thy people turn away from Thee, and no one would remain on earth to invoke Thy name or set his face toward the sanctuary of communion with Thee and the Kaaba of Thy sanctity, I would still arise singly and alone to render Thy Cause victorious, to exalt Thy word, to proclaim Thy sovereignty, and to celebrate the praise of Thine august Self. And this, O Lord, even though each time I venture to extol Thee by any name, I am filled with perplexity, for I am fully aware that all of Thine exalted attributes and all of the most excellent names which I associate with Thee and by which in Thy holy presence I supplicate Thee, reflect naught but the measure of mine own understanding, inasmuch as whenever I have regarded a name to be laudable, I have associated it with Thyself. 

- Baha’u’llah  (compilation: The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

March 16

All praise, O Lord my God, be unto Him Who is the Manifestation of Thine Essence, the Dayspring of Thy oneness, the Mine of Thy knowledge, the Source of Thy Revelation, the Repository of Thine inspiration, the Seat of Thy sovereignty, and the Dawning-Place of Thy Divinity—He Who is the Primal Point, the Most Exalted Countenance, the Ancient Root, and the Quickener of nations; and glory be upon him[1] who was the first to believe in Him and in His verses, whom Thou didst make a throne for the ascendancy of Thy most sublime Word, a focal-point for the manifestation of Thy most excellent names, a dayspring of the radiance of the Sun of Thy providence, a dawning-place for the appearance of Thy names and attributes, and a treasury of the pearls of Thy wisdom and Thy commandments.  And all honor be upon him [2] who was the last to come unto Him, whose arrival was like His arrival, and Thy manifestation in him [3] like Thy manifestation in Him,[4] except that he was illumined with the lights of His face and prostrated himself before Him and testified to his servitude unto Him; and glory be upon those who were martyred in His path and who offered up their lives for love of His beauty. 

- Baha’u’llah  (compilation: The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

[1] Mullá Husayn

[2] Quddús

[3] Quddús

[4] The Báb

March 15

O Maryam! Appreciate the value of these days, for erelong thou shalt no longer behold the Celestial Youth in this contingent realm, but shalt perceive the signs of grief in all created things. Soon shall ye bite your fingers’ ends in remorse, for ye shall fail to find this Youth, even were ye to search out the reaches of earth and heaven. Thus hath the decree been sent down from the realm of transcendent glory. Yea, erelong thou shalt behold all existence biting its fingers in bereavement over this Youth, and, search as it may through the entirety of every earth and every heaven, yet will it fail to attain His presence. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)

March 14

Well is it with the one, O my God, who hath been so enriched by Thee as to be made independent of the kingdoms of earth and heaven. Rich is the one who hath held fast to the cord of Thy wealth, is submissive before Thy face, and for whom Thou art sufficient above all things. Poor is the one who hath dispensed with Thee, waxed proud before Thee, turned away from Thy presence, and disbelieved in Thy signs. Suffer me, then, O my God and my Beloved, to be numbered with those whom the breezes of Thy will move as they list, not with those whom the wind of self and passion stirreth and directeth as it pleaseth. 

- Baha’u’llah  (compilation: The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

March 13

I swear by Thy glory and Thy sovereignty which overshadow the kingdoms of earth and of heaven! Were any of Thy chosen Ones and Thy Messengers to meditate on the manifold evidences of Thy most exalted Pen—a Pen which is driven by the fingers of Thy will—and were he to muse on its mysteries, and its tokens, and all that it showeth forth, he would be so perplexed that his tongue would fail to extol and describe Thee, and his heart would be utterly unable to understand Thee. For he would, at one time, discover that from this Pen there floweth out unto all created things the water that is life indeed, and that the Pen itself hath been named by Thee the trumpet whereby the dead speed out of their sepulchers. At another time he would find that there proceedeth from this Pen such fire as Thine own Revelation can kindle, and as He Who conversed with Thee (Moses) on Sinai hath perceived.

How marvelous, then, are the manifold tokens of Thy might, and how great are the diverse evidences of Thy power! The learned have, without exception, admitted their ignorance when confronted with the radiance of the Luminary of Thy knowledge; and the mighty have all confessed their impotence in the face of the billowing Ocean of Thy power; and the rich have one and all acknowledged their poverty before the effusions of the Treasuries of Thy wealth; and the worldly wise have each recognized their nothingness beside the splendors of the Light of Thy beauty; and the exalted have all witnessed unto their abasement when face to face with the effulgence of the Day-Star of Thy glory; and they who are in authority have borne witness to their own evanescence and to the evanescence of others, and discovered the eternity of Thy majesty, and of Thy sovereignty, and of Thy sublimity, and of Thy power. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah’)

March 12

So it was that the Luminary of the world returned to ‘Iráq, [1] where We found no more than a handful of souls, faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead. The Cause of God had ceased to be on any one’s lips, nor was any heart receptive to its message. This lowly Servant arose then with such vigour to protect and promote the Cause of God that methinks a new resurrection was ushered in. The glory of the Cause became manifest in every town and its fair name exalted in every city, to such an extent that all the rulers treated it with tolerance and benevolence.

O Maryam! The determination evinced by this Servant to withstand the onslaught of His foes from every sect and kindred so deepened their rancour that it can scarcely be depicted or imagined. Thus was it ordained by the Lord of might and power. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)

[1] After Baha'u'llah's retirement to Kurdistan

March 11

I swear by Thy glory, O Thou Who art the Lord of all being and the Possessor of all things visible and invisible! Every man of understanding hath been so bewildered at Thy knowledge, and every man endued with insight been so perplexed in his attempt to fathom the signs of Thy great glory, that all have recognized their powerlessness to visualize, and their impotence to soar into, the heaven wherefrom one of the Luminaries of the Manifestations of Thy knowledge and of the Day-Springs of Thy wisdom hath shone forth. Who is he that shall befittingly describe this most sublime station and this most august seat—the seat which, as decreed by Thee, transcendeth the comprehension of Thy creatures and the testimonies of Thy servants, and which hath everlastingly been hid from the understanding and the knowledge of men, and been closed with the seal of Thy name, the Self-Subsisting. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah’)

March 10

Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh’; Compilation on ‘Reincarnation and the Nature and Progress of the Soul’, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

March 9

During this period of retirement [to the mountains of Kurdistan] none, whether among My brothers or any other soul, sought to investigate the matter, let alone to grasp its significance, though its import surpasseth the creation of earth and heaven. And yet, I swear by God, every breath drawn in the course of My journey was better than the service of both worlds, and my very retreat was the mightiest testimony and the most perfect and conclusive evidence. Yea, true vision is needed, if one is to behold the Scene of transcendent glory, inasmuch as the blind one is deprived of beholding his own countenance, much less the Countenance of eternal holiness. How can a mere shadow comprehend the One Who casteth it? How can a handful of clay grasp the subtle reality of the heart?

At last the divine decree prompted certain spiritual souls to remember this Canaanite Youth.[1] Armed with a number of petitions, they searched in every place and enquired from every person, until they found in a mountain cave a trace of this traceless One. He, verily, guideth all things unto the Straight Path.[2] I swear by the Day-Star of eternal truth that the arrival of these souls so astonished and amazed this poor and exiled Soul that My pen is powerless to describe it. Perchance a steel-sharp pen will emerge from the realm of eternity, rend the veils asunder, and reveal these secrets with perfect truth and absolute sincerity; or haply an eloquent tongue will speak and bring forth the pearls of the spirit from the shell of silence. And this indeed would not be hard of accomplishment for God. In brief, the hand of Him Who is the Unconstrained broke the seal of the mysteries—this, however, none can perceive save them that are endued with true understanding, nay rather, them that have severed themselves from all things. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)

[1] Joseph

[2] Cf. Qur’án 22:54

March 8

This is the Day, O my Lord, which Thou didst announce unto all mankind as the Day whereon Thou wouldst reveal Thy Self, and shed Thy radiance, and shine brightly over all Thy creatures. Thou hast, moreover, entered into a covenant with them, in Thy Books, and Thy Scriptures, and Thy Scrolls, and Thy Tablets, concerning Him Who is the Day-Spring of Thy Revelation, and hast appointed the Bayán to be the Herald of this Most Great and all-glorious Manifestation, and this most resplendent and most sublime Appearance.

And when the world’s horizon was illumined, and He Who is the Most Great Name was manifested, all disbelieved in Him and in His signs, except such as have been carried away by the sweetness of Thy glorification and praise. There befell Him what must remain inscrutable to everyone except Thee, Whose knowledge transcendeth all who are in Thy heaven and all who are on Thy earth. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah’)

March 7

Through the Teachings of this Day Star of Truth every man will advance and develop until he attaineth the station at which he can manifest all the potential forces with which his inmost true self hath been endowed. It is for this very purpose that in every age and dispensation the prophets of God and His chosen Ones have appeared amongst men, and have evinced such power as is born of God and such might as only the Eternal can reveal. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh’; Compilation on ‘Psychology and Knowledge of Self, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

March 6

…I stood against Mine enemies manifest as the sun and appeared before the dwellers of the heavenly kingdom bright as the moon. Not for an instant did I seek to preserve Mine own life, and not for a moment did I pursue Mine own ease and comfort. I offered up My soul in the path of My Beloved and laid down My life for His sake. My fortress was My reliance on God, and My shield Mine attachment to that peerless Friend; Mine armour was Mine unfailing trust in Him, and My hosts Mine ardent hope in His grace.

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)

March 5

All glory be to Thee, O my God, for Thou hast graciously enabled me to fast during this month which Thou hast related to Thy Name, the Most Exalted, and called 'Ala (Loftiness). Thou hast commanded that Thy servants and Thy people should fast therein and seek thereby to draw nearer unto Thee. The days and months of the year have culminated with the Fast, even as the first month began with Thy Name, Bahá, that all might testify that Thou art the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, and be well assured that the glory of all names is conferred only through the glory of Thy Cause and the word expounded by Thy will and revealed through Thy purpose. Thou hast ordained that this month be a remembrance and honour from Thee, and a sign of Thy presence amongst them, that they may not forget Thy grandeur and Thy majesty, Thy sovereignty and Thy glory, and may be well assured that from time immemorial Thou hast ever been and wilt ever be Ruler over the entire creation. Nothing created in the heavens or on the earth can hinder Thee in Thy governance, nor can anyone in the realms of Revelation and creation prevent Thee from fulfilling Thy purpose. 

- Baha’u’llah  (Compilation: The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)

March 4

O My friend! Listen with heart and soul to the songs of the spirit, and treasure them as thine own eyes; for heavenly wisdoms, even as vernal showers, will not rain forever upon the earth of men’s hearts, and though the grace of the All-Bounteous One is never ceasing and never stilled, yet to every time and era a portion is allotted and a bounty assigned, which is vouchsafed in a given measure. “And no one thing is there, but with Us are its storehouses; and We send it not down but in settled measure.”[Qur'án 15:21] Indeed, the clouds of the Loved One’s mercy rain only on the garden of the spirit, and bestow this bounty only in the season of spring. Other seasons have no share in this supernal grace, and barren lands hold no portion of this bounteous favour. 

- Baha’u’llah  (The Seven Valleys, revised translation by the Baha’i World Center included in ‘The Call of the Divine Beloved’)

March 3

And since it hath been demonstrated that Thy most august Self is immeasurably exalted above all that hath been created in the world of being, and is far above the reach and ken of the apprehension of Thy chosen Ones and Thy loved Ones, the splendors of the light of Thy unity are therefore manifested, and it becometh evident unto every one, whether free or bond, that Thou art One in Thine own Self, one in Thy Cause, and one in Thy Revelation. Great is the blessedness of the man who, in his love towards Thee, hath rid himself of all attachment from every one except Thyself, and hastened unto the horizon of Thy Revelation, and attained unto this Cup which Thou hast caused to excel all the seas of the earth.

I beg of Thee, O my God, by Thy power, and Thy might, and Thy sovereignty, which have embraced all who are in Thy heaven and on Thy earth, to make known unto Thy servants this luminous Way and this straight Path, that they may acknowledge Thy unity and Thy oneness, with a certainty which the vain imaginations of the doubters will not impair, nor the idle fancies of the wayward obscure. Illumine, O my Lord, the eyes of Thy servants, and brighten their hearts with the splendors of the light of Thy knowledge, that they may apprehend the greatness of this most sublime station, and recognize this most luminous Horizon, that haply the clamor of men may fail to deter them from turning their gaze towards the effulgent light of Thy unity, and to hinder them from setting their faces toward the Horizon of detachment. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah’)

March 2

O peoples of the earth! Make mention of God on this Day whereon the Spirit hath spoken and the realities of those who were created by the Word of God, the Mighty, the Exalted, have ascended unto Him. It behoveth everyone on this day to rejoice with exceeding gladness, to clothe himself in his finest attire, to celebrate the praise of his Lord, and to give thanks unto Him for this most great favour. Blessed are they that have apprehended the purpose of God, and woe betide the heedless. 

- Baha’u’llah  (‘Days of Remembrance’)