The Spirit who teaches us to receive the whole of Jesus, carry the cross, live in truth and prepare for His kingdom
By Fr Michael Payyapilly VC
When Jesus says to His disciples, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever” (John 14:16), He is preparing them for something they do not yet understand. They know Jesus and have become accustomed to His presence, His voice and His ways. Yet in John 14 and again in John 16, Jesus keeps speaking about the One who is to come: the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, the One who will remain with them, remind them, teach them and lead them. The disciples do not yet understand everything Jesus is saying, but He is insistent about one thing: the Holy Spirit must become part of their discipleship.
In the previous session I spoke about the Jubilee in Leviticus 25, that beautiful movement in which debts are released and everything begins to go back, in a sense, to zero. Jesus presents Himself as the Jubilee, the great reset. Like I said then, we are pilgrims because we have a purpose in Christ, and that purpose is connected with a destination. For us, the destination is the kingdom of God. It is eternal life. That is why we do all this spiritual work, all these prayers and all these retreats: we are preparing ourselves, allowing ourselves to be moulded so that we will fit into the kingdom of God.
I once read a line here in Australia: if you want to flaunt it in the summer, work on it in the winter. You cannot arrive at summer one fine day and expect everything suddenly to be fit. You work on it beforehand. I think the same way about the kingdom of God. We are preparing ourselves now for eternal life. The great reset has to touch our relationship with the Lord, our relationship with one another and our relationship with ourselves. For that journey, the Lord gives us gifts that are integrally connected to Jesus Himself, and the first of those gifts is the Holy Spirit.
Another Advocate
During my seminary formation, we moved through different stages: novitiate, philosophy, theology, and the other years that prepared us for priesthood. At every stage there was a rector and a vice rector, and initially it was always a bit of a battle to work these characters out because they had a huge say in whether we would become priests or not. Some could be very soft; some could be extremely strict. Through the year we became used to them, and somehow things worked out between them and us so that we could get through to the next stage.
Then the year ended and we had to move into another phase of formation, with a new rector and a new vice rector. Even if the rector we were leaving had been extremely strict, at least we had worked him out. We were comfortable with the person we knew. The new person created anxiety because we did not know him. I think of that when Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate.” The disciples were used to Jesus and comfortable with Him, but the Lord did not simply leave them in that comfort. He kept preparing them for the Holy Spirit.
Very often our retreats work the other way around. We begin with the love of God, then speak about sin, forgiveness and Jesus, and on the last day we finally speak about the Holy Spirit and pray for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Over time I began to realise that it is very difficult to understand Jesus and His ways if we do not have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. We can know a great deal about Jesus and speak a great deal about what He said, but it is difficult actually to embrace it. Many of the things Jesus says are extremely challenging.
Forgiveness is an obvious example. We all know that Jesus calls us to forgive, and we are amazing when it comes to advising someone else to do it. If one sibling comes to us angry with another, we can say very calmly, “Forgive them. It is okay.” When it comes to us, however, we have a good enough reason. Sometimes we even soften the language. We say, “I do not have any unforgiveness; I am only uncomfortable with that person.” I often say that “uncomfortable” is a buttered-up word for unforgiveness. We know what Jesus has said, but it is hard to digest when His word touches our own bitterness, anger or unforgiveness. Unless we are powered by the Holy Spirit, some of what Jesus asks of us is extremely difficult to embrace.
Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” What does that mean? To accept Jesus as Lord is to accept His lordship. It means that what the Lord says, I embrace. We tend to pick and choose the things we like to hear, especially what is comfortable for us. I remember watching a programme here in Australia in which a woman spoke about how much she loved the biblical command to love your neighbour. It is a beautiful command, but the verse also tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and then to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can conveniently shelve the part that challenges us. But that is not giving Jesus lordship. When I give Him lordship, I receive what He says in its totality. Saint Paul tells us that no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit, and it is impossible to give Jesus that kind of lordship unless our discipleship is powered by the Holy Spirit.
We have already received the Holy Spirit in Baptism, but genuinely ask yourself: how much of a relationship do I have with the Holy Spirit? How much do I not only know about Him, but actually know Him? More importantly, how much of my discipleship is powered by the Holy Spirit? We can speak a lot about God the Father, about Jesus and about what Jesus said, and still find it difficult to embrace His teaching. That is why the Holy Spirit cannot simply be shelved to the last day of a retreat. He is essential to the whole journey with Jesus.
Jesus Himself shows us how essential the Spirit is. The Holy Spirit is present at the Annunciation, at the Baptism of the Lord, through the wilderness and at the Cross. We often say that the Spirit led Jesus into temptation, but I prefer to look at the whole movement from above: Jesus is preparing for His ministry, the wilderness lies between, and the Spirit leads Him through that wilderness into His ministry. Hebrews 9:14 then speaks of Christ offering Himself through the eternal Spirit. The work of the Spirit is there all through the ministry of Jesus, even at the Cross. If the Holy Spirit is present continuously in the ministry of Jesus, why would Jesus not give the Holy Spirit to the disciples?
When Discipleship Becomes Flawed
Jesus tells the disciples that they need the Holy Spirit, and this is why I keep returning to one phrase: any discipleship that is not powered by the Holy Spirit will turn into a flawed discipleship. It can become directed towards the self, towards self-glory and self-satisfaction. We may still pray, go to Mass, receive the Eucharist and make retreats, but if that discipleship is not directed towards eternal life, it can still remain flawed.
Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” So often this is what happens in our relationship with Jesus. We turn the relationship into something that is supposed to satisfy me and satisfy my body. Jesus is supposed to give me healing; Jesus is supposed to give me miracles. The whole thing can become like a vending machine: put in one prayer, one Rosary, one retreat, press the button and expect something to come out. When it comes out, I am happy, and very easily we begin to build our whole relationship with Jesus on that.
We can even introduce Jesus to children in the same way. “You pray and Jesus will give you,” we tell them. They try it once and it works. They try it twice and it works. Then the fourth time it does not work, and after a while they begin to think this is not a very good bet: sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Eventually they can ask, “Why do I need to pray if half the time it does not work?” The whole concept of Jesus we have presented to them has become centred on this life. How often do we speak to our children about eternal life? How often do we speak to them about the kingdom of God?
I first came to Melbourne in 2008 when I had been a priest for about a year, and over the years I have returned many times. When I was in Sydney, I used to come to Melbourne every month. Even after all those retreats and all those years, I am still genuinely surprised by how often I can sense this desire for prosperity within God’s people. We pray and then ask, “After all these prayers, why am I sick?” People say, “You have been going for retreats, and still see your situation.” But we are not in the presence of Jesus because He is going to give us goodies and keep us happy all the time. Our journey of faith, prayer and spirituality has something far deeper in it. Through all of this, we are being moulded and prepared for eternal life.
That is why whatever Jesus teaches us has to be heard in the light of eternal life, not simply in terms of what I get now. I remember giving a couples retreat in Kenya at a retreat centre where Father Antony was the director. There were thousands of people there, many of them couples, and before I went out Father Antony gave me one instruction: give the talk and immediately come back. “Do not talk to anyone,” he told me, “because you will never be able to solve their marital problems.” We priests love trying to solve problems, so I did not follow that advice quite as carefully as I should have.
A man came to me and asked why Christians made such a big issue of having one wife. In his tribal culture, he explained, polygamy was accepted and men might marry four or five women. He argued that Jesus said He hated divorce but had not told them they could not marry two, three, four or five wives. Then he told me, “We give a life to them. All these four or five actually have a life because of us.” I did not know what to say. I kept quiet and thought to myself, “I should have listened to Father Antony.” In the end I simply said, “I will pray for you.” I was not very happy with that answer, but I went off.
At the end of the retreat, after the anointing, I saw the same man running towards me. This time the other priests were around, and I tried to hide behind them because I imagined he was going to continue the discussion in front of everybody. He caught me, pulled me around and said, “I understand now.” I looked at him, and he said, “I do not know how it happened, but when I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, I just saw my life in a different light.” A human being could not help him, but the Holy Spirit helped him understand the teaching of Jesus.
This is the only way we can actually live out Christian discipleship, because some of what Jesus says is extremely hard. If your eye causes you to sin, He says, tear it out; if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Most of us still have both our eyes and both our hands. The extent to which Jesus asks certain things of us can be hard to comprehend, and so we have a tendency to turn His teaching around and make it easier for ourselves. The theologian Edward Schillebeeckx once said that the Word of God is like a roaring lion, but we have turned it into a little pussycat that puts its tail between its legs and walks around. We do not like to be challenged. When our discipleship is powered by the Holy Spirit, however, the Spirit helps us understand what Jesus is asking, what He is telling us to do and where He is challenging us.
A Spirit of Power, Not Cowardice
Saint Paul tells Timothy that God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but a Spirit of power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7). Sadly, we can live our discipleship in cowardice. We are afraid to suffer and afraid to carry the cross. Ask who wants healing and many hands will go up. Ask who wants to carry the cross and the response changes very quickly. We do not mind carrying a cross, but very often our prayer is, “Let it be an easy one, Lord.”
There is a cartoon I once saw that describes this very well. Everyone is carrying a cross and walking along, and one man finds his cross extremely heavy. He stops, takes out a little saw and cuts off a piece. After walking further he still finds it too heavy, so he cuts again. He keeps cutting until it becomes a nice, comfortable little cross, almost like the fashionable ones we wear around our necks. He is very happy and walks on with a big smile until he reaches the end of the road and finds a cliff. The others put down their crosses and use them to go across. His cross is now nice and small, but it cannot reach the other side.
That is our journey more often than we would like to admit. We do not want the crosses; we do not want to suffer. Let all the good things come, let all the healings come, let all the miracles come. We love hearing the stories of the martyrs on their feast days. The parish priest tells us something about them and we think, “Wonderful, praise God.” But when the cross comes close to us, the reaction can become, “Lord, this cross I do not want. I just want to live a good life in Jesus, pray, and let Jesus do good things for me.”
Then look at the martyrs again. Why did they become martyrs? They loved Jesus, certainly, and they wanted to witness to Him, but they also wanted eternal life. They wanted to go and become one with Jesus. When the opportunity for martyrdom came, they embraced it because they believed in the life of His kingdom. I often think the brand of spirituality we have today can become so flawed that we want Jesus so that we will be healed and live longer here. They loved Jesus and embraced death so that they could have eternal life with Him. We can very easily lose the plot and turn spirituality back towards this life alone.
Whenever I speak about suffering and Christian discipleship, there is one prayer I make to the Lord: “Lord, when my chance comes, please let me suffer in dignity.” After all this preaching, it would be such an embarrassment if one day you heard Father Michael lying helpless on a bed saying, “Why did Jesus do this to me? After all the preaching I did, after all the places I went to, why did Jesus do this to me?” So I pray, “Lord, when my time comes, please let me embrace it.”
Before Pentecost, the disciples lived in fear. They ran when Jesus was arrested. After Pentecost, they were no longer the same people; apart from John, the apostles were martyred. The Holy Spirit did not make the hard things disappear. Sickness is still hard to carry, financial burdens are still hard, and some crosses are terribly hard. But He gives the Spirit of strength and the Spirit of power, and He helps me understand that I am being moulded at every moment.
The same Spirit has to power the way we live marriage. When our discipleship is not powered by the Holy Spirit, we begin to live marriage according to our egos. “Why did she do that? What kind of a woman is she? What kind of a husband is he?” Those reactions come from us. If I do not let the Holy Spirit power my discipleship, my voice will be louder than the voice of the Holy Spirit, and my justifications will seem more sane than His.
Ask yourself honestly how you are living your Christian discipleship. Have you made it a very easy way, cutting corners here and cutting corners there until it becomes comfortable? Jesus says very clearly that the gateway to the kingdom is narrow. Do not try to make it wide. It is narrow; it is hard, and Jesus warned us about it. “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom,” but the one who does the will of the Father. In marriage you may want your will; in priesthood I would love to do mine. But God’s will challenges my will and my way of thinking. Otherwise we end up with a flawed and weak discipleship, and that kind of discipleship will not last. The first serious difficulty or challenge will make us walk away.
The Spirit of Love and Truth
Paul does not stop with the Spirit of power. He speaks also of the Spirit of love, and that brings us to 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind.” None of those words is really tested by the people with whom we are already okay. It is very easy for me to apply all of this to a person I like.
During the retreat I discovered that one of the men present was a Liverpool supporter, as I am. Immediately we had something in common. I joked that I could never be rude to a fellow Liverpoolian. We could speak about Liverpool all we wanted and never irritate each other. Then I asked whether there were any Manchester United supporters present and offered my condolences. It is easy for me to apply all of 1 Corinthians 13 to a person who is okay with me. Love is kind to the Manchester United fan; more importantly, love is patient towards the spouse with whom you just cannot get along. It is not rude to the husband or wife who does not do things in the way you feel is right.
Paul says that love is not irritable or resentful and does not insist on its own way. How much resentment lives within me? How many times do I insist on my own way? This is where we struggle when we do not have the Spirit of love that comes from the Holy Spirit. I am not saying it is easy. It is extremely hard. Every time I listen to couples and hear the problems they carry, afterwards I thank the Lord so much that I am a priest. I am not joking; I actually do. Married life asks a great deal of people, and if the Holy Spirit is not powering your discipleship, it will be very hard to live out the kind of love Saint Paul describes.
What does the world do when that kind of love becomes difficult? It changes the definition of love. Human beings keep changing their concepts according to their needs and desires, and then we begin to ask, “After all, if it is love, what is wrong?” Jesus calls the Advocate the Spirit of Truth. Without the Holy Spirit, we can end up accepting a definition simply because the world has given it to us. So the question has to remain: is this love as defined by God, or love as defined by human beings?
This is why it is important to keep asking for the Holy Spirit to power our discipleship. Without the Spirit of Truth, I can remain a slave to whatever is offered to me, and also a slave to my own ego, pleasure and bodily desires. The Holy Spirit tells us what is right and wrong and helps us understand the teaching of Jesus. He does not change the truth according to our needs. As Scripture says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. When the Lord speaks a truth, that truth remains.
We can continue with prayers, the Eucharist, Holy Mass and retreats and still have a flawed discipleship if it is not directed towards eternal life. It can simply get stuck here.
From Theory into Practice
So begin by acknowledging the presence of the Holy Spirit. Be aware of His presence. We received Him in Baptism, but how many times in a day do we actually think about the Holy Spirit? We cannot build Christian discipleship without a relationship with Him. When I become aware that He is there, I begin to listen to His voice. He tells me what is right and what is wrong and which path to take. If I am not listening to Him, I can remain a slave to my ego, my pleasure and my bodily desires.
I learned this in a very personal way while I was studying in the United States. I had gone there for a month of intensive study when a particular situation arose and I felt extremely empty. I had never felt so empty in my life, so dry and so lost. Friends were around me, yet I did not know where to turn. I did not know what was right and what was wrong, and my mind was not thinking clearly. One hot night in June, I lay on my bed weeping and thinking to myself, “I feel so lost and empty.”
Sometimes, especially as priests who preach, we make ourselves believe that we need to be strong all the time. But we are human beings and we are weak. It can even become difficult for us to admit our weakness and ask the Lord for help because we spend so much time telling everybody else, “Ask the Lord for help.” As I lay there feeling lost, empty and desperate, I felt what I can only describe as a blanket come over me, a blanket that simply rested on me. For nearly an hour or two that sense remained. The emptiness began to disappear, and I felt a presence moving within me, with so much comfort, so much joy and a clarity that started coming back.
Then I started realising that, when I most needed to ask, “Holy Spirit, speak to me,” I was not asking Him. I was trying to solve the situation by myself. I thought that, with all the experience I had, I would somehow find a solution that would be okay. But I could remain in ministry all my life and still fail to ask the Holy Spirit. He might be there in theory but not in practice. He might be part of what I believe without actively powering my discipleship.
Pray and ask for the Holy Spirit so that you will understand where your discipleship is supposed to go according to the will of God. Ask Him to cover you. Acknowledge His presence and be aware that He is there. When we are aware of His presence, we begin to listen to His voice.
If we have to go through the great reset, we need the presence of the Holy Spirit. He will tell us what is right and wrong. He can convict the heart even without anything being preached from the front. He can make clearer everything we know about Jesus and His teaching, help us understand what it actually means and show us what it is preparing us for. He helps us understand why the Lord’s yeses and noes are there in our lives.
My dear brothers and sisters, ask the Holy Spirit to become alive and active in you, to speak to you, convict you and power your discipleship. Let this be our prayer: “Spirit of God, You speak to me, transform me, prepare me for Your kingdom. Let me never live my discipleship in cowardice, but let me be powered by the Spirit of power, the Spirit of love and the Spirit of self-discipline. Lead me, Lord.”
Pastoral note: The call to carry the cross does not mean seeking suffering, refusing appropriate medical or practical help, or assuming that illness and hardship are punishments from God. The teaching in this article concerns the orientation of Christian discipleship: the Holy Spirit gives courage and fidelity when unavoidable suffering, sacrifice and difficulty enter life, while keeping the disciple directed towards Christ and eternal life.
Adapted and edited from a talk delivered by Fr Michael Payyapilly VC during the “Powered by the Holy Spirit” Live-In Retreat at Belgrave Heights Convention Centre, Belgrave Heights, Victoria, on 19 July 2025.