At noon, Our Lady appeared to the children, and after repeating her requests for the daily rosary, and promising that World War I would soon end, she said to them plaintively and sadly: “Do not offend the Lord our God anymore, because He is already so much offended.” Then, while the three seers saw visions of the Holy Family, the crowd of at least 70,000 people were mesmerized as the Miracle of the Sun unfolded. What happened was so incredible that even non-believers couldn’t deny it, as this report, which appeared in the secular Lisbon paper O Dia, indicates: “The silver sun … was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds. A cry went up from every mouth and the people fell on their knees on the muddy ground. … The light turned a beautiful blue as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands. The blue faded slowly and then the light seemed to pass through yellow glass. … People wept and prayed with uncovered heads in the presence of the miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they.”
José Almeida Garrett, a young lawyer, reported that “The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl. Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight.”
Eyewitnesses to the miracle said that the sun danced in the sky, the color of the whole landscape changed successively, and the sun seemed to come down towards them, so that many of the crowd thought it was the end of the world. Something else that suggests that the miracle was genuine is that the people at the Cova felt the heat of the sun as it approached them. Their clothes and the ground – which had been soaked by the torrential rain – were dry at the end of the miracle.
Fatima, and the Miracle of the Sun in particular, are great “signs of the times” that have been given to the Church and the world by God through the Blessed Virgin. Within the Church, especially in this centenary year, we really ought to be taking both the great miracle and message of Fatima much more seriously.
José Almeida Garrett, a young lawyer, reported that “The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl. Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight.”
Eyewitnesses to the miracle said that the sun danced in the sky, the color of the whole landscape changed successively, and the sun seemed to come down towards them, so that many of the crowd thought it was the end of the world. Something else that suggests that the miracle was genuine is that the people at the Cova felt the heat of the sun as it approached them. Their clothes and the ground – which had been soaked by the torrential rain – were dry at the end of the miracle.
Fatima, and the Miracle of the Sun in particular, are great “signs of the times” that have been given to the Church and the world by God through the Blessed Virgin. Within the Church, especially in this centenary year, we really ought to be taking both the great miracle and message of Fatima much more seriously.
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