Against The Grain

The best way to win souls is not by actions that have as their purpose to win those souls, but by actions that have no other purpose than to bear witness to the truth, and bear witness to this truth with the full and overflowing measure of love. Perhaps it is possible to find here the exact distinction between proselytism, which could be defined as an activity of spiritual conquest on a patient (actio transiens) and the true apostolate, which could be defined as the service of souls, and the awakening of souls to the truth, by the superabundance of activity that comes from union with the truth (actio immanens). In the latter case the animating form is love; in the former case it is a subliminated instinct of imperialism.

- Jacques Maritain, from The Story of Two Souls: The Correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Julien Green, ed. Henry Bars. (Fordham University Press, 1988).