The Illumination I Experience

**Episode 4 — The Illumination I Experience

The Night I Thought I Was Dying

I was five years old.

I don't remember every detail of that illness, but I remember the heat.

My temperature was around 39.2°C or higher, and I was trembling. I was very young, very sick, and completely dependent on my mother.

At that age, you don't understand medicine.

You don't understand what a high fever means.

You simply know that your body feels terribly wrong.

And then something happened that I have carried with me for the rest of my life.

I thought I was dying.

But what happened next was stranger than death.

I began to see myself.

I Saw My Own Body

I remember the bed.

I remember my mother.

I remember the curtain.

And somehow, I seemed to be looking at my own body from somewhere outside of it.

Sometimes I seemed to be behind the curtain, looking toward the bed where my body was lying.

Then, at other moments, it felt as though I was back near the bed, almost peeping through the curtain toward myself.

The perspective seemed to change.

I cannot explain how.

I was five years old.

I didn't know words like out-of-body experience.

I didn't know anything about mystical experiences.

I simply thought:

I am here... but I am also looking at myself there.

That was my experience.

And I have never forgotten it.

Then the Memories Started

What happened next was even more personal.

I began seeing things that had happened to me.

Not great tragedies.

Not enormous sins.

I was only a child.

But I saw the things that had hurt me.

I remembered being bullied.

I remembered being treated badly by other children.

I remembered moments when someone had thrown something at me.

One memory stands out particularly clearly.

A friend had thrown a firecracker at me.

I remember crying.

I remember being hurt and frightened.

And I remember the strange loneliness of being a child who did not know what to do with that pain.

Then other memories came.

Words.

Stones.

Things thrown at me.

Moments when people made me feel small.

Moments when I was bullied and simply cried.

I wasn't fighting back.

I wasn't plotting revenge.

I wasn't doing anything to hurt them.

I was just a little boy who felt alone.

And somehow, during that strange experience, I saw all of it again.

I Was Not Fighting Back

What strikes me now is that I did not see myself attacking anyone.

I saw myself receiving the hurt.

I saw the things that had been thrown at me.

I saw the words.

I saw the bullying.

And I saw myself crying.

It was as if I was being shown not only what had happened, but what those experiences had done to my heart.

At five years old, I didn't have the vocabulary to describe emotional wounds.

I didn't know what trauma meant.

I didn't know what forgiveness meant in the deeper sense.

I simply knew that I was hurting.

And then I saw Him.

The Man on the Cross

Beside me was a man crucified on a cross.

He was covered in blood.

Even now, I don't want to make the image more dramatic than it was.

I was a child.

I did not understand theology.

I did not know how to explain mystical experiences.

But I knew who I believed I was seeing.

Jesus.

And something about His presence changed everything.

He was standing beside my soul as though He were protecting me.

The things that had hurt me seemed to come toward me—firecrackers, stones, words, all the things that had caused pain.

And He was there.

Between me and them.

Protecting me.

I didn't hear a long speech.

I didn't receive some complicated theological explanation.

There was simply a profound sense:

You are not alone.

And Somehow I Knew It Was Not My Time

This is difficult to explain.

I simply knew that I was not going to die.

I had the sense that I was outside my body, but I also had the sense that someone was protecting me.

I knew:

It wasn't my time yet.

I cannot prove what happened.

I cannot prove that my soul literally left my body.

I cannot prove that what I experienced was a supernatural event.

All I can do is tell you what I remember.

And what I remember has stayed remarkably important to me.

Then I Opened My Eyes

And this is the part that still amazes me.

I opened my eyes.

The fever was gone.

Not gradually.

Not after several days.

I woke up feeling as though I was no longer sick.

The trembling was gone.

The heat was gone.

I felt normal.

More than normal.

I felt new.

I had been so sick the night before, and then suddenly I felt as though something inside me had been reset.

I remember the feeling more than I remember the exact medical details.

It was as though I had been through something.

And somehow I had come back different.

I Felt Illuminated

I didn't know the phrase Illumination of Conscience when I was five.

I couldn't possibly have known it.

But later in life, when I encountered Catholic discussions about the idea of an illumination or warning in which a person becomes deeply aware of the state of their own soul, I immediately thought about that childhood experience.

Not because I believe I experienced the great Warning associated with certain private revelations.

I don't claim that.

My experience happened when I was five.

It was personal.

It was private.

And I have no way of proving exactly what it was.

But the similarity in the experience of looking inward stayed with me.

I saw my wounds.

I saw what had happened to me.

And I was confronted with the condition of my own heart.

Garabandal and the Idea of the Warning

Years later, I learned about the reported apparitions of Our Lady at Garabandal in Spain.

The alleged apparitions, reported between 1961 and 1965, include what has become known as the Warning—an experience described by its proponents as a profound examination or illumination of conscience in which people would become aware of their sins and their relationship with God.

That immediately caught my attention.

Not because I wanted to claim that my childhood experience was the same thing.

But because I recognized something familiar.

The idea of being confronted with yourself.

The idea of seeing what you had done and what had been done to you.

The idea of standing spiritually exposed before truth.

And most importantly:

the possibility that such an experience could lead not simply to fear, but to conversion and mercy.

There is an important distinction here.

Garabandal is an alleged apparition, not a doctrine that Catholics are required to believe. The Church has historically exercised discernment regarding the reported events, and the Vatican's current norms emphasize that alleged supernatural phenomena must be carefully discerned and are not automatically objects of faith.

So I am not saying:

“My childhood experience proves Garabandal.”

I am saying:

“When I later learned about the idea, it gave me language for something I had experienced as a child.”

That distinction matters to me.

But I Was Only Five

There is another thing that makes this experience difficult to understand.

I was five.

I had not lived a long life.

I had not committed the kinds of things adults might imagine when they hear the word conscience.

I was just a child.

But perhaps that is part of what made the experience so powerful.

The things I saw were not primarily about enormous sins.

They were about wounds.

I saw the things that had been done to me.

And somehow, I was being taught something about forgiveness.

God Taught Me to Forgive

Looking back, I believe that was one of the greatest lessons of the experience.

I had been hurt.

I had been bullied.

I had cried.

I had felt alone.

But I did not wake up wanting revenge.

I woke up with something different.

I felt as though my heart had been softened.

As a little boy, I somehow understood that I needed to forgive.

That doesn't mean what happened to me was acceptable.

It doesn't mean bullying wasn't painful.

It doesn't mean that people who hurt us should never be held accountable.

Forgiveness does not make evil good.

But forgiveness can stop the wound from becoming the person you are.

And I believe God was teaching me that very early.

Perhaps Jesus Was Showing Me Something Else

There is another thought that has stayed with me.

Perhaps the experience was not only about what other children had done to me.

Perhaps it was also about the way God sees a child who is hurting.

I remember the image of Christ standing beside me.

The blood.

The cross.

The protection.

The sense that the things being thrown at me could not reach me because someone was standing between me and them.

As a child, I understood that in the simplest possible way:

Jesus was protecting me.

I didn't understand theology.

I understood love.

My Mother Was Still There

And there is another thought I carry with me.

My mother was beside my body.

She was there while I was sick.

And if I had died that night, I believe she would have been devastated.

I was only five.

I had not lived enough of my life to understand how deeply a mother can be affected by losing a child.

But somehow, looking back, I think about her.

Maybe part of what I experienced was simply the realization that my life mattered.

That I was loved.

That I was not meant to disappear.

That there was still something ahead of me.

I did not know what that something was.

I only knew:

I was still here.

I Woke Up Feeling Like a New Being

After the experience, I felt different.

It was not merely that the fever was gone.

I felt renewed.

I felt as though something had been washed away.

I felt lighter.

And somewhere inside my young heart was a new understanding:

Forgive.

I didn't know then how much forgiveness would become part of my life.

I didn't know how many times I would be hurt.

I didn't know how many times I would have to forgive people.

I didn't know how many times I would have to ask God to help me forgive myself.

But perhaps that was the first lesson.

Was It a Medical Experience, a Mystical Experience, or Something I Cannot Explain?

I have asked myself this question many times.

I had a very high fever.

Fever can affect perception, dreams, memory, and consciousness.

So I cannot honestly tell you that I know exactly what happened to my body or brain that night.

At the same time, there is another layer to the experience that has never left me.

The meaning.

The forgiveness.

The presence of Christ.

The feeling of protection.

The sense of renewal.

The way I woke up.

I cannot scientifically measure those things.

And I don't want to pretend that I can.

This is why I tell this story as a personal mystical experience, not as a medical explanation or a doctrine.

What the Church Teaches—and What It Doesn't

The Catholic Church has a long history of taking reports of mystical experiences seriously while also insisting on discernment.

The Church's current norms explicitly recognize that people may report apparitions, visions, interior or exterior locutions, messages, and even unusual physical or psychological phenomena. At the same time, the Church emphasizes careful discernment and warns against automatically treating such experiences as supernatural.

That balance is important.

Mystical experiences can be meaningful.

But meaningful does not automatically mean officially authenticated.

And personal certainty does not create Church doctrine.

Even when the Church permits positive pastoral devotion around an alleged supernatural phenomenon, the faithful are not thereby required to believe that the phenomenon itself is supernatural.

I actually find that humility beautiful.

It leaves room for mystery without requiring us to pretend we know more than we do.

I Don't Need You to Believe Me

Perhaps this is the most important thing I can say about this episode.

I am not asking you to believe that my soul left my body.

I am not asking you to believe that I literally saw heaven.

I am not claiming that I experienced the Garabandal Warning.

And I am certainly not claiming that my experience proves anything about future events.

I am simply telling you what happened to me.

I was five.

I was very sick.

I remember seeing myself.

I remember seeing the pain I had experienced.

I remember seeing Christ crucified beside me.

I remember feeling protected.

And I remember waking up feeling completely different.

That is my story.

You can accept it.

You can question it.

You can interpret it differently.

I am okay with that.

The Illumination Was Not About Fear

When people hear the phrase Illumination of Conscience, they can imagine something frightening.

But when I think about my own childhood experience, I don't remember the deepest part of it as fear.

I remember being seen.

I remember being protected.

I remember forgiveness.

I remember Christ.

And I remember coming back.

Perhaps that is why I don't think the deepest meaning of an examination of conscience has to be terror.

It can also be mercy.

Sometimes seeing ourselves honestly is the beginning of healing.

Sometimes remembering what hurt us teaches us not to hurt others.

Sometimes discovering our own wounds teaches us compassion.

And sometimes God does not show us our brokenness to condemn us.

Maybe He shows it to us because He wants to heal it.

I Was Five, But the Lesson Stayed

That little boy eventually grew up.

The fever became a memory.

The curtain became a memory.

The people who bullied me became part of my past.

But the lesson never disappeared.

Forgive.

Don't become what hurt you.

Remember that you are not alone.

And when you are wounded, look toward Christ.

Years later, when I began experiencing dreams, visions, signs, inner messages, and other spiritual experiences, I often returned mentally to that childhood night.

Because it was perhaps the first time I understood something I would spend the rest of my life trying to understand:

The spiritual life is not always about seeing the future.

Sometimes it is about finally seeing yourself.

And Perhaps That Is What Illumination Really Means to Me

I don't know whether what happened to me at five was supernatural.

I don't know whether it was a mystical experience, a fever-related state, something neurological that I simply didn't understand, or something beyond those explanations.

I only know what it meant to me.

I was a frightened little boy.

I had been hurt.

I felt alone.

And then, in the middle of that experience, I encountered what I understood as Christ standing beside me.

Protecting me.

And when I opened my eyes, I felt renewed.

Maybe that was the illumination I needed.

Not an illumination that showed me the end of the world.

Not a prediction.

Not a prophecy.

Just a little boy being shown that his pain did not have to become hatred.

That he could forgive.

That he was loved.

And that he was not alone.

A Final Thought

Perhaps the greatest examination of conscience is not:

“How bad am I?”

Perhaps it is:

“What is happening inside my heart?”

Who have I hurt?

Who has hurt me?

What am I holding onto?

What do I need to forgive?

Where have I stopped loving?

Where have I allowed pain to change me?

And where do I need Christ to stand beside me again?

I was five years old when I first encountered those questions without knowing how to name them.

I only knew that I was sick.

I only knew that I saw myself.

I only knew that I saw my wounds.

And I only knew that the man on the cross was there.

When I opened my eyes, I was still here.

And somehow, I knew:

I had been given another chance to live differently.

A Prayer for Illumination and Mercy

Lord Jesus,

if there are places in my heart that I refuse to see, give me the courage to see them.

If there are wounds I continue to carry, help me bring them to You.

If there are people I have not forgiven, teach me how to forgive without pretending that what happened was acceptable.

If I have hurt others, give me humility to recognize it.

If I have been hurt, protect my heart from becoming bitter.

And if I ever become confused by an experience I cannot explain, give me wisdom, discernment, and peace.

Let me seek truth without fear.

Let me remain humble before mystery.

And above everything else, let me remember that I am never alone.

Amen.

Sometimes illumination is not about seeing what is coming.

Sometimes it is finally seeing what is already inside us—and discovering that Christ was there all along.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our readers.