“For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16)

Every Catholic has a sacred duty to evangelise: to share in the fruitfulness of Christ by handing on to others the grace we ourselves have received. Yet in a world so saturated by secularism, it can feel increasingly difficult to articulate our faith in the ordinary course of our lives. We need not minimise the real threat that sharing our faith can pose to our social standing or even our professional flourishing. But against that temporal danger stands an eternal one: the possibility of damnation for the people to our right and left.

Evangelisation is a multifaceted work, and it will look very different according to the person and circumstance. A Franciscan sister once shared with me, outside a café in Assisi, her own experience of evangelisation. She likened it to farming – an apt enough image, with its roots firmly planted in scripture.

She said that some of us are called to break up barren soil: to plough deep beneath the surface and overturn the hearts of the men and women we encounter. The work can be deeply uncomfortable. A plough does violence to undisturbed ground: it tears it open precisely so that something might grow there. This is necessary for the eventual fruitfulness of that soil, of that soul, but it can also be discouraging work for someone who never gets to sow the seed, much less reap the harvest.

Another person might come along to sow. As a friend, or perhaps from a position of authority as a teacher, he introduces someone to the reasons why God exists, why Christ established the Catholic Church, why scripture can be trusted and why the claims of Christianity deserve to be taken seriously. He might even remain long enough to nurture what has been planted.

Even if you do all of this well, you may never see the fruit yourself. In my brief time as a high-school teacher, it quickly became apparent that much of our work consisted in supplying tools that might not find their use for years, perhaps even decades, long after those students had forgotten us and the small seeds we had planted. And even that work usually depends upon someone having come before us, breaking up the soil and opening a mind to the possibility of conversion.

Then there are those who reap the harvest, and here there is a particular danger of vanity. It is a rare thing for one man to do the ploughing, the sowing and the reaping himself. More often than not, as with our recent OCIA class, we merely welcome into the Church men and women whom God has prepared through many other hands.

There is another reason the agricultural image is so fitting. Even after the field has been ploughed and the seed has been sown, the rains must still fall from heaven. God must give the unseen growth in the quiet depths of the earth. As St Paul writes: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

There is no room for boasting. On the one hand, it is simply our duty to share the love we ourselves received without merit. On the other, although we truly participate in the work, it is God who gives the growth.

It is necessary, then, for us to think concretely about how we might share Christ with our brothers and sisters. Make no mistake: the danger is real, and it is eternal. God does not need you or me in order to convert men and women. Rather, He extends to us the privilege of participating in His work as a gift. He wishes not merely to preserve us from hell, but to ennoble us by allowing us to share in His saving work and ultimately in His victory in heaven.

My own disposition is such that I tend to be a plougher. My wife can attest, perhaps with some chagrin, that I will readily strike up a conversation with a stranger on a plane or train. Whether at the gym or the barber’s, I find that there is almost always an opportunity to wake someone up to the reality that the Catholic Church exists, that it is true and that I have centred my life around that truth.

Usually I am not trying to complete someone’s conversion in a 20-minute conversation. I am trying to disturb the soil – to introduce a question, challenge an assumption or simply make Catholicism impossible to dismiss as something belonging to another age.

By no means is this a boast. It is simply my duty to share what Christ has given me, and, if I am honest, I do it very poorly much of the time. Yet I would make so bold as to encourage you to make Christ known in word as well as in deed.

If your colleagues at work are genuinely oblivious to the fact that you are a worshipper of Christ, you are doing them a grave disservice.

There will come a day of final judgement when they will be held accountable for what they have done, and we too will be held accountable for what we could have given them. God has chosen to communicate His grace through instruments: through His Church and her sacraments, through angels and even through ordinary men and women like you and me.

Nor does this always require some grand act of apologetics. Mention that you went to Mass when someone asks about your weekend. Invite a friend to come with you. Offer to pray for someone and actually tell him that you will. When religion arises in conversation, resist the instinct to retreat into vague language about “values”. Evangelisation need not begin with a theological disputation; very often it begins simply by refusing to hide the fact that Christ is the centre of your life.

It is up to each of us, then, to discover how our particular disposition lends itself to evangelisation. Perhaps you too are a plougher, capable of disturbing comfortable assumptions and opening a mind to questions it had never seriously considered. Perhaps you are a sower, gifted at offering arguments, instruction and encouragement. Or perhaps yours is the wonderful task of harvesting: welcoming into the Church those whom others have spent years preparing.

Whatever part has been given to us, let us receive the commission eagerly. We have received without merit; let us give without stint. Necessity has been laid upon us. Woe to us if we do not preach the Gospel.