(Front of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy)

Today is the 99th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. Beginning on May 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared repeatedly to three shepherd children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Although they immediately believed that she came from Heaven, they asked her for a sign of her heavenly origin for everyone else. Our Lady told them a miracle would take place on October 13, 1917. On that day, 70,000 people witnessed an incredible phenomenon. It was reported in the secular newspapers, even the strongly anti-Catholic one. Fr. John De Marchi moved to Fatima in 1943, and spent seven years interviewing eyewitnesses. He wrote:

"When Lucia cried, 'Look at the sun!' the people responded. The rain at that moment had stopped; the sun was clearly seen. There was no cloud to obscure it, yet it did not strain the eyes of any man to look on its unveiled light. The people could see that the sun was strangely spinning. It began to revolve more rapidly, more frighteningly. It began to cast off beams of many-colored lights in all directions. Shafts of brilliant red came from the rim of the revolving star and fell across the earth, the people and the trees; and green lights came and violet and blue in mixed array. It is a story of wonder and of terror, too, as the great star challenges the discipline of all the ages it has known, and begins careening, trembling in the sky for seventy thousand witnesses to see. Now, horribly, it appears to plunge from its place in the heavens and fall upon the earth. People are crying; 'I believe! I believe!'.....An interesting document has been left by the late Father Inacio Lourenco, a priest from Alburitel, a village about eleven miles from Fatima....[skipping to the end of Fr. Alburitel's account:] 'After about ten minutes the sun, now dull and pallid, returned to its place. When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy, and everyone joined in thanksgiving and praise to Our Lady.'"

~ John De Marchi, IMC, "The True Story of Fatima", imprimatur 1952.

What a comfort to know that the world is not "spinning out of control". Just as God caused the sun to spin wildly in the sky, He could put an instant stop to things happening in the world today. But He chooses to allow the chaff to grow along the wheat, and He will make it all right at the end of time. As a good priest said to me recently, "Trust often."