the sun and the moon refers to signs preceding  the great and terrible day of the L

ORD,

  which is part of the 

sufferings which the Church must endure (cf. Rev 6:12). There is a connection between the darkness of the sun 

at the Crucifixion and the darkness of the sun at the time of the Church's great suffering, for the Church must 

suffer even as Christ Jesus suffered. However, the signs in the sun and moon which Sacred Scripture predicts 

are supernatural signs. These signs will occur during the time of the sufferings prophesized by the book of 

Revelation.

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    Furthermore, lunar eclipses are common events. There are at least two lunar eclipses every year, and there 

can be as many as three or four lunar eclipses in the same year. Also, a lunar eclipse is visible from any place 

on earth where it is night at the time of the eclipse, and will be visible from some places on earth at sunset or 

sunrise. This makes the observation of lunar eclipses from any particular place on earth fairly common. Surely 

the prophecy of Joel is not fulfilled every year, merely because there is a lunar eclipse. When Saint Peter spoke 

about the moon turning red, in a quote from the prophet Joel, he was not speaking about a common event of 

nature, but of future great signs and wonders from God. 

    There is a tendency among some Christians today to try to explain every event described by Sacred 

Scripture as some type of natural event. For example, some who are weak in faith try to explain the miracles of 

the multiplication of the loaves as being not miraculous at all, but merely a sharing of the food that each 

person had brought with them. Some try to explain the 3 hours of darkness when Jesus was on the Cross as 

being caused by a cloud or a dust storm. But Sacred Scripture refers to these and other great signs and wonders 

as the works of God, not as a coincidence of nature with human events. I find no basis in Sacred Scripture for 

the belief that a lunar eclipse coincided with the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. 

A.D.

 30 

    At this time, there are also many faithful Christians who believe that Christ died in 

A.D.

 30. Nisan 14 fell on 

Friday, April 7, in 

A.D.

 30. (This is the same day of the month as in the year 

A.D.

 19.) This year for the 

Crucifixion assumes that the usual dates given for the reign of Tiberius Caesar are correct. The revised dates 

for Tiberius Caesar's reign and the reign of Pontius Pilate over Judea, as presented in chapter 13 of this book, 

would rule out the year 

A.D.

 30 because Tiberius and Pilate both no longer held power at that time. Also, the 

chronology of king Herod's reign, presented in chapter 12 of this book, places the rebuilding of the Temple of 

Jerusalem from 32 

B.C.

 to 25 

B.C.

 This time frame is too many years before 

A.D.

 30 to agree with the Gospel 

of John's statement that the rebuilding of the Temple occurred 46 years earlier (than a Passover during Christ's 

Ministry). 

    Even without these revised dates, the year of 

A.D.

 30 does not accord with various chronological statements 

by Blessed Anne Catherine. For example, she stated that Christ was born 7 years earlier than some year which 

was generally thought to be the year of Christ's Birth.

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 Christ was conceived and born about 33 years before 

the Crucifixion (see chapters 2 and 7). So, a date of 

A.D.

 30 for the Crucifixion places the Birth of Christ in 4 

B.C.

 But the year 4 

B.C.

 is not 7 years earlier than any proposed year for the Birth of Christ. Also, she places 

the death of Herod about the time of Christ's sixth year.

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 But the latest date which scholars in general will 

consider for the death of Herod is 1 

B.C.

 Further explanations on this point, as to why Christ could not have 

been born in any year in the last decade of the first century 

B.C.

, are presented below. 

The Birth of Jesus Christ 

1 

B.C.

    Modern scholarship places the death of Herod no later than 1 

B.C.

, effectively ruling out the chronology 

given by Dionysius (the abbot who began the  

A.D.

  system of counting the years), which places the Birth of 

Jesus Christ in December of 1 

B.C.

 Jesus could not have been born in Dec. of 1 

B.C.,

 if Herod died beforehand 

in early 1 

B.C.

 Then Herod would not have been alive, 1  to 2 years later, to take the lives of the Holy 

Innocents, causing the Holy Family to flee to Egypt. 

    Also, the Gospel of Luke clearly tells us that there was an enrollment (or census) at the time of the Birth of 

Jesus. This census occurred during the reign of Caesar Augustus, when Quirinius was governor of (or had 

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