On Sunday, as always on the Second Sunday in Lent, we were given the gospel account of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and in Matthew’s version it is clear that the disciples experienced a mystical vision.

So what exactly happened? What did they see, how did they see it and by what process did they see what they saw?

In the early 198s I went with a group of pilgrims to Medjugorje. At that time the teenage visionaries were still experiencing daily apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While there I also had a mystical experience seeing the sun spin. I told the story here: But what did we see and remembering the Miracle of the Sun what did thousands of people see at Fatima? They reported that the sun was spinning and plunging to the earth.

But of course we know that did not happen. If the sun were really spinning everyone on earth would have seen it, and the sun did not plunge toward the earth because it is a ball of fire a million times bigger than the earth. If it had plunged even slightly toward earth the earth would be a cinder.

And what about the visionaries? When asked about their visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary the children of Medjugorje (like Bernadette at Lourdes and the Fatima children) reported that the Lady was just as solid and “real” physically as everyone else. She was not ephemeral, ghostly or transparently “spiritual” and yet only the visionaries saw her.

I knew a priest in England who saw dead people and he said they were just as solid and substantial as the next person. They were not ghostly and ectoplasmic.

It would seem that Peter, James and John had a similar experience. Moses and Elijah were solid and “real” in appearance.

So whaat is happening? I do not profess to be an expert in such matters, but we can say for a certainty that the sun did not really spin. We SAW the sun spin and were convinced of it because we believe what we can see. However we also know rationally that the sun did not literally spin and (at Fatima) plunge to earth.

Therefore, something else happened. There was a miracle, but the miracle took place within the mechanisms of our perception and our processing of sense perceptions. In other words it was in our head–not in the literal physical world.

This is where the miracle is most bewildering because there are certainly unexplained miracles that DO take place in the material/physical realm. Eucharistic miracles, miracles of healing and miracles of nature like incorruptible bodies of saints or levitating and bi-locating saints.

What do we make, therefore of mystical visions? I think we take them at face value. We believe people who have experienced certain phenomena. Do we believe what they experienced is always necessarily congruent with what we know of the physical, historical facts? We don’t need to. We simply believe that they really did experience something inexplicable and important for them. Furthermore, as we do with the Transfiguration, we reflect on the experience and try to discern what God is revealing to us through it. But the church also maintains that private visions and revelations are just that: private.

We don’t impose belief in them on other people and we don’t create dogma from them. If nothing in them contradicts church teaching then they are accepted as part of the greater mysteries of our redemption and while accepting them we should also cultivate a healthy skepticism. In other words, we should believe our eyes…but not always.