“This is the Day in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into all created things. It is incumbent upon all the peoples of the world to reconcile their differences,and, with perfect unity and peace, abide beneath the shadow of the Tree of His care and loving-kindness.”  – Bahá’u’lláh

In the Najíbíyyih Garden outside the city of Baghdád, thirty-one days after Naw-Rúz, in April 1863, Bahá’u’lláh declared His Mission. In a Tablet, He refers to His Declaration as “the Day of supreme felicity” and He describes the Garden of Riḍván as “the Spot from which He shed upon the whole of creation the splendors of His Name, the All-Merciful”.

Bahá’u’lláh spent twelve days in this Garden prior to departing for Istanbul, the place to which He had been banished . For 12 days He received friends and family and declared HE was the initiator of a new era in history in which the tyrannies and injustices of the past would give way to a world of peace and justice: an embodiment of the principle of the oneness of humankind.The “Divine Springtime,” had arrived.

In 2022, Local Spiritual Assemblies are to form on the First Day of Ridván—which begins at sunset on Wednesday, April 20, and ends at sunset on Thursday, April 21. ‘I earnestly appeal to every one of you to endeavor to approach the election with that purity of spirit that can alone obtain our Beloved’s most cherished desire.

Let us recall His explicit and oft-repeated assurances that every Assembly elected in that rarefied atmosphere of selflessness and detachment is, in truth, appointed of God…” (Shoghi Effendi, Principles of Bahá’í Administration, pages 65-66) The establishment of a Local Spiritual Assembly draws special blessing to the entire population, not just the Bahá’í community.