Now that we’ve had our eyes cleared, we can continue on in our call to preach the Gospel. Yet it will not be without difficulty; even John the Baptist, as mighty a preacher as he was, met his match in Herod who, though he enjoyed listening to his preaching (Mark 6:20), ultimately did not hear a single word. Truly, John’s words were “pearls before swine.”
What is Jesus after here in today’s Gospel? It is quite simple: it is God, not man, who converts hearts. You may be as eloquent as St. John Chrysostom, as brilliant as St. Thomas Aquinas, as likeable and charming as Ven. Fulton Sheen, but even at the top of your game you cannot convert a heart that is set against you. To continue trying to preach to someone who is obstinately opposed to you is not only a wasted effort, Jesus warns, but could lead to your own spiritual harm as well. How many sincere Christians, in an effort to bring a non-believer to faith in Christ, had their own faith shaken or lost altogether when confronted with questions and challenges they themselves were unprepared for?
While it is likely a fairly rare thing to happen, it is a danger, but that is not the danger Jesus is warning us about. The greater danger, as He warned us of yesterday, is pride. What might have begun as a sincere desire to bring a soul to Christ can, in light of the person’s resistance, mutate into a competition of wills, a game to see who might be victorious: a debate with a winner and a loser. No longer is the Christian concerned with the other’s soul but rather their own honor and glory, to be able to count coup in the spiritual arena. “I will make this person a Christian!”
But is that what we would have the other person do unto us? Would we have the other person drag us through an endless string of debates, crowing at each gained inch, plotting strategies in advance of their next encounter with us, in the hope of one day saying, “Gotcha!” Of course not; we would despise that! Therefore we must preach to others and seek their conversion in the manner we would wish for ourselves: with gentle patience, with sincerity, and with integrity of witness, and all of it bolstered by prayer. We are but sowers of seed, and as St. Paul writes, “…neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).
And so we plant our seeds, trusting that God will continue the work we begin, as we continue along the narrow way to Heaven, minding our step rather than running recklessly, careful not to tread upon the delicate growth He is causing in the souls around us.