A POPE DESCRIBED AS 'FROM THE SUN' WAS BORN DURING ECLIPSE AND LEAVES WITH ONE
He was born during an eclipse (May 18, 1920) and there will be an eclipse, a rare type of partial eclipse, Friday (April 8) on the day of his burial.
And so now eyes have turned more intently to an old prophecy attributed to the Irish monk St. Malachy O'Morgair -- who supposedly foresaw the entire succession of popes by using riddle-like nicknames, with the one fitting the 110th -- John Paul II -- being De Labore Solis, which means "from the labor of the sun."
Indeed, John Paul II was the Pope of Fatima -- where there was the famous "miracle of the sun" -- and reigned during an explosion of other supernatural claims involving solar miracles. Like the sun he came out of the East (Poland). Like the sun he visited countries all around the globe. There was a glow that emanated from him.
Of the sun, yes, and with a stature that means some kind of change of era is coming. This was a giant of a man. This was "Mary's Pope." It was the Pope of her secret. It was as if he was there to prevent or stave off a (long-overdue) chastisement and now he is gone.
The way he died could not have been more dramatic, the "culture of life" Pope dying two days after Terri Schiavo in a benchmark case on the value of life -- she prematurely put to death, in commotion, in terror, he dying with all the dignity with which the old, infirm, and disabled should die.
There was the Pope who had fought for Terri nearing the same end of the road (with even a feeding tube) but in a way that was natural and calm, in a state of prayer, such that he was able to tell his aides he was "happy" and that they too should be happy and then ending his life with Mass, more prayer, and the word, "Amen."
The very way he died was "prophetic." You can't get a much more pointed ending.
And then there is the Divine Mercy saint, St. Faustina, who quoted Christ as foreseeing a "spark" that would come from Poland and herald His "final coming." The Church is extremely and rightly wary when the Second Coming is claimed, but in this case it comes from a saint who was recently canonized -- by John Paul II.
Could it really be a case of approaching such monumental events? If not the Second Coming, a manifestation? Or is there much more yet to play out?
There is St. Faustina and then there was the prophecy of mystic Maria Esperanza -- who in a book foresaw that before a manifestation of Christ and the onset of major purifying events "an innocent person whom He loves a lot will die, an innocent person. This will shock the world, will move the world."
To a growing number of people, that sounds like Theresa Marie Schindler [funeral display, left, or here].
And so the prophetic pulse beats -- rapidly. Eclipses and comets have long been seen by humans as signposts. It was Halley's hanging over Jerusalem that seemed to foretell of the destruction there in the first century (like the sword of Damocles) and there were two eclipses or at least unusual darkness that occurred near Palestine in AD 29 and AD 33 -- events that, for some Christians, give astronomical proof to the biblical account that the sky darkened at Jesus' death on the cross.
In ancient China was the belief that eclipses occurred when the "gods" dispatched a dragon to eat the sun. The word "eclipse" comes from a Greek word, "ekleipsis," which means to "fail or be abandoned" -- and indeed eclipses are often associated with the downfall of kings and other leaders. "The sun has perished out of heaven and an evil mist hovers over all," was Homer's horrified account of an eclipse in The Odyssey.
The one expected Friday as the Pope is buried will be what is known as a "hybrid eclipse," part of a "ballet" in celestial physics (as the press describes it) between the sun, earth and moon. "Friday's event will last three hours and 24 minutes," reported a news service. "It begins at 18:54 GMT southeast of New Zealand, then races eastwards on a line north of the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and finally Venezuela, where there will be a 33-second annular eclipse at sunset at 22:18. People living in New Zealand and to the north and south of this central line, including most of the southern United States, will see a partial eclipse -- the Sun will appear to have had a "bite" taken out of it. It will be visible on Friday along an arc ranging from the southwestern Pacific to South America, at a time it will already be night in Rome."
The next hybrid eclipse will take place on April 20, 2023. Is there something in that year, or around that time? Was not something around then associated with Medjugirje or mystics such as Josyp Terelya of the Ukraine?
But back to St. Malachy. As one encyclopedia notes: St. Malachy gave his manuscript to Innocent II to console him in the midst of his tribulations, and the document remained unknown in the Roman Archives until its discovery in 1590 (Cucherat, "Proph. de la succession des papes," ch. xv). They were first published by Arnold de Wyon, and ever since there has been much discussion as to whether they are genuine predictions of St. Malachy or forgeries.
"The silence of 400 years on the part of so many learned authors who had written about the popes, and the silence of St. Bernard especially, who wrote the "Life of St. Malachy," is a strong argument, say some, against their authenticity, but it is not conclusive if we adopt Cucherat's theory that they were hidden in the Archives during those 400 years," it notes.
Is there really anything to do? Some say that if it is really St. Malachy's prophecy, there could be the intervention of popes between the next, De Gloria Olivae ("from the glory of the olive"), and then the last one he allegedly mentioned, Petrus Romanus ("Peter the Roman").
They say he may only have been noting the especially significant pontificates, not every single one.
If not -- if the number he named forms a finite set -- there are only two more popes left, since Malachy saw only 112 of them.
Like it or not, the death of Pope John Paul II shows every sign of igniting renewed interest in, even fervor for, the prophetic, and that interest may have grown during his funeral Friday when in a eulogy Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger accented both the Pope's dedication to the Blessed Mother and his focus on Divine Mercy.
"When this Pope will have completed the task which Jesus has entrusted to him and I will come down from Heaven to receive his sacrifice, all of you will be cloaked in a dense darkness of apostasy, which will then become general," she said.