Lent 2026 Day 9 – Feeling the Spirit
Yesterday, for Lent Day 8, I posted about an important letter. I didn't title it as the Day 8 entry in the series because I wanted it to be more of a standalone post. But today I'm continuing with Day 9, sharing some thoughts on the Holy Spirit.
I've been reading from a journal I kept while serving as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served in the Brazil Santa Maria Mission from December 2000 to December 2002. I went straight to Brazil and spent two months in the São Paulo Missionary Training Center learning the basics of the Portuguese language and learning how to do the work of proselyting and teaching. After two months, I traveled to my assigned mission area in the southernmost state of Brazil.
So far I have read what I wrote about my experiences in the MTC and in my first several months of actual missionary service. It has been fun to revisit those times, but my 19-year-old self was pretty naïve and a bit cringe at times. But I was committed and trying hard to be a good missionary.
One thing I've noticed is that I repeated phrases like “I felt the Spirit so strong” or “the Spirit was so strong” very often. It's very common to hear such expressions in LDS church meetings and classes. We believe the Holy Spirit testifies of truth, but we also tend to associate its presence with positive feelings like happiness, hope, joy, peace, and similar. Likewise, we tend to associate negative feelings sadness, despair, agitation, and confusion with a lack of the presence of the Spirit. So when we say we are “feeling the Spirit” – or at least when I wrote about it as a missionary and in my life since then, it's almost always in the context of those positive feelings.
I am still trying to learn about the Catholic perspective on the Holy Spirit and its role in our lives and in the Church, but it is quite different from the LDS perspective. I think Catholics tend to be more skeptical of feelings and emotions as it is sometimes difficult to discern their origin. They can be misleading. This is not to say that God cannot send positive feelings and emptions to us through the Holy Spirit, but that those feelings don't necessarily always come from God. And we can be easily manipulated through our feelings.
So I'm trying to reflect on specific experiences I've had in the past where I believed I “felt the Spirit so strong” and think about the context and circumstances surrounding them.
I do believe I have felt the undeniable influence of the Holy Spirit at times throughout my life. The most powerful times have almost always been times when I have focused my thoughts and attention on any aspect of Jesus Christ, such as his birth, his ministry and teachings, his sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, his resurrection.
Other times, when I think I have “felt the Spirit so strongly”, I think I have been caught up in feelings of unity, fellowship, belonging, love, etc. associated with church meetings.
But I would say that, for me, the majority of the time the Holy Spirit works on me almost indirectly. Quietly “nudging” me. A thought crosses my mind that I should text someone to say hello. Or I feel a brief feeling of reassurance as I am wrestling with my doubts and questions about my faith. I can easily dismiss or ignore those nudges, and I have for long stretches. But the nudges are always there. Always trying to gently turn my head to look at Jesus Christ. Because wherever we are looking is were we will go. And the Holy Spirit wants us to follow Christ.
I want to follow Christ, too. I'm just really stubborn and foolish. And easily distracted. So I really need the Holy Spirit. I'm just trying to understand more about how the Holy Spirit works and better recognize and discern his influence in my life.
Something has been drawing me to seriously investigate Catholicism and I can't explain it. And it's not stopping. My church leaders would certainly tell me that Catholicism is false and that it's not the Holy Spirit that's been nudging me to look into it. But I don't know.
#100DaysToOffload (No. 139) #faith #Lent #Christianity