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.
1256
    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.
1257
 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.
1258
 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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