No. 23 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The Ordaining One
To call on God as the Ordaining One is to place every outcome, including our healing, into hands that hold all of existence in their wise and loving order.
I call on Thee O Clement One, O Majestic One, O Ordaining One! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer
Plain meaning · Ordaining
from “ordain”: 1. To set in order; to arrange according to rule; to regulate; to set; to establish. "Battle well ordained." Spenser. The stake that shall be ordained on either side. Chaucer. 2. To regulate, or establish, by appointment, decree, or law; to constitute; to decree; to appoint; to institute. Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month. 1 Kings xii. 32. And doth the power that man adores ordain Their doom Byron. 3. To set apart for an office; to appoint. Being ordained his special governor. Shak. 4. …
Definition from Webster's Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain). When these Writings were translated into English, the translator relied on Webster's New International Dictionary, 1934 edition, of the same Webster's tradition. source
What “The Ordaining One” means
The meaning above is the plain dictionary definition of the word. What follows reflects on it as a name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.
The word 'ordaining' points to the act of decreeing, establishing, and setting things in their rightful place. When we call God the Ordaining One, we are acknowledging that nothing in creation happens outside of a framework of divine intent. Every moment, every condition, every threshold we stand at has been met by an awareness far greater than our own. This is not a cold or mechanical idea, it is one of the most intimate affirmations a person can make, because it says that what touches us is not random, not forgotten, and not beyond the reach of wisdom.
To ordain is also to consecrate, to mark something as belonging to a purpose. In many spiritual traditions, ordination sets a person or a thing apart for a sacred role. When we think of God in this way, we are reflecting on how life itself, even in its most painful chapters, may carry within it something we have not yet been able to see. The Ordaining One does not simply watch events unfold; this name suggests an active, purposeful presence that has, in some sense, already met us in what is coming.
There is something quietly steadying about this name when we sit with it. 'Ordaining' implies that there is an order, not chaos. It suggests that beneath the confusion or the grief or the illness, a structure of meaning exists. We may not be able to read it clearly. We may not be able to read it at all in a given moment. But calling on the Ordaining One is a way of trusting that such a structure is real, and that we are held within it rather than lost outside of it.
Calling on The Ordaining One for healing
When illness arrives, whether it settles in the body, the mind, or the deeper places of the spirit, one of the most disorienting things about it is the feeling that life has gone off-script. Plans dissolve. The future becomes uncertain. A sense of disorder can move in alongside the pain itself. It is in exactly this kind of moment that calling on the Ordaining One can offer something no medical chart can provide: a sense that even this, even here, is somehow within the ken of a wisdom that loves us. That is not the same as saying the illness was meant to harm us, or that we should not seek every competent medical help available to us, we absolutely should. It is saying that we need not face the uncertainty alone, and that the disarray we feel may not be the whole picture.
Bringing this name into your recitation of the Long Healing Prayer can become an act of relinquishment, a gentle, honest handing-over. You are not pretending the pain is not real. You are not bypassing the hard work of treatment or recovery. You are simply acknowledging, perhaps in a whisper, that the One who ordains all things has not lost sight of you. How healing unfolds, and in what form it comes, belongs to a wisdom we trust rather than a blueprint we control. That trust is itself a kind of medicine for the spirit, one that can coexist with, and quietly strengthen, every other form of care you are receiving.
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Living the Word
Applying The Ordaining One in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The Ordaining One being asked of you right now, and how will you practice it? Keep a short note each time you return, and watch your own path with this name take shape over time. It stays on this device.
In the Bahá'í Writings
“God Is the Great Compassionate Physician Who Alone Gives True Healing October 19th All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy. If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us! There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastric malady. Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing. All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“21.1That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error. 22.1Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to discriminate against the signs that have accompanied and proclaimed their Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity, if ye be of them that apprehend and believe this truth. Be ye assured, moreover, that the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God, nay whatever pertaineth unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“15.3O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer. 15.4O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. Acquiring Divine Virtues”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The Ordaining One
- What does it mean to call God 'the Ordaining One' in the context of prayer?
- It is an acknowledgment that God's authority extends not just over grand cosmic events but over the particular circumstances of our lives. When we use this name in prayer, we are expressing trust that what we are experiencing falls within a divine awareness that orders all things with purpose. It is an act of humility and of hope at the same time.
- Does calling on the Ordaining One mean my healing is already decided and prayer won't change anything?
- This is a genuinely thoughtful question, and it deserves a careful answer. Bahá'í prayer is understood as real communion with God, not a formality. Calling on God by this name is not fatalism, it is trust. The relationship between divine will and human supplication is a deep mystery that scholars and seekers have pondered across centuries, and we hold it humbly rather than claiming to resolve it here.
- Should I still see a doctor if I am praying the Long Healing Prayer?
- Yes, absolutely. The Bahá'í teachings are clear that both spiritual and material means of healing are important, and that medicine is a gift to be used. Prayer and medical care are not in competition with each other; they address different dimensions of our wellbeing and are most powerful when pursued together.
- Why is 'the Ordaining One' grouped with names like 'the Clement One' and 'the Majestic One' in the prayer?
- The prayer weaves together names that illuminate different facets of the same divine reality, tenderness, grandeur, and purposeful order all appearing in the same breath. This clustering invites the one praying to hold these qualities together: that the God who decrees is also the God who is clement, and that majesty and mercy belong to the same source. It is a remarkably full portrait offered in just a few words.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer