The living water of God’s saving work spreads out through the world into many diverse tributaries. Just as much as we need God to call preachers to labor in the vineyard, so we need Christians who aren’t called to preach themselves to support the Church’s mission by their prayers.
Saint Paul, the paradigmatic preacher, had no illusions about where the success of his missions came from. Because his conversion was so sudden, Paul saw clearly the divine source of his faith. He then inferred a universal truth from his particular case: God’s agency is the source of the conversion and faith of all believers. This knowledge preserved St. Paul’s profound humility, while others with his same success might well have fallen into vainglorious corruption. Paul knew that the success of his preaching was not attributable to his own person or anything particularly special about his natural abilities. We can see an example of this in how he admonished Corinthian Christians who emphasized the human instruments of their faith. He wrote: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:6-7).
If any preacher’s words are met with faith and conversion, then that fact cannot be attributed simply to any particular genius, skill, or eloquence of his own. The supernatural act of faith is precisely that: supernatural. Without God’s activity deep in the soul of our audience, our words, even if they are lofty and eloquent, are all vain. It is a humbling fact, reminding all preachers that God is the source, preserver, and perfector of any good work we do, not we ourselves. Just as the source of St. Paul’s success was above him, our success is above us.
So if the desired effect of our preaching is above us, what must we do to achieve it? We must “draw near to the throne of grace” in the depths of our souls “that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16). If we are to bring many souls to their salvation in Christ, then it is crucial that we present this longing of our soul interiorly to God, who wills that human intercessors be part of the plan of his grace. Since our preaching has its living source in the interior life, we friar preachers still consider our Order to be a contemplative one. We go out to preach, but we return to a cloister, and there in silence we approach the throne of grace to ask God for the salvation of those who hear us.
In order to further support our preaching, Saint Dominic founded several convents of cloistered nuns, and to this day these women exercise a privileged vocation of drawing intimately close to Christ and obtaining from him the growth of the seeds that were planted and watered in the hearts of men and women by God’s preachers. Although they do not fraternize with the world, the impetus of the conversion of many souls lies in their prayers, and in the prayers of other cloistered religious men and women. These models of the interior life devote their lives to the salvation of the world precisely in their separation from it.
Regarding this special vocation, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap, the former preacher of the papal household, says:
The fruitfulness of the cloistered virgin depends on the fact that, by prayer, silent faith, hope and love, she acts directly on the primary cause, which is God, not on the secondary causes. And it is the Bridegroom who distributes her fruits to his friends…. They belong to the Bridegroom, who gives them to whom He will. Others will have to worry about how to distribute and administer them. It is not her concern.
The living water of God’s saving work spreads out through the world into many diverse tributaries. The soul that approaches closest to the source of the river in God calls forth a deluge that has the greatest effect downstream on all the tributaries. Just as much as we need God to call preachers to labor in the vineyard, so we need Christians who aren’t called to preach themselves to support the Church’s mission by their prayers.
✠
Republished with gracious permission from Dominicana (June 2025).
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
Image: Ivan Shishkin, Pond in an Old Park
Image: El Greco, Saint Paul