The Sun Shall Go Down at Midday: Amos' Dark Noon and the Darkness at the Cross
Old Testament: Amos 8:9-10
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that the sun shall go down at midday, and I will make the earth dark in the day of light: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and I will bring up sackcloth upon every back of yours, and baldness upon every head: and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the latter end thereof as a bitter day.
Old Testament, also: Zacharias 12:10
And I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace, and of prayers: and they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son, and they shall grieve over him, as the manner is to grieve for the death of the firstborn.
New Testament: Matthew 27:45; Luke 23:44-45; John 19:34
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth, until the ninth hour. ... And it was almost the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. ... But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water.
The connection
Amos was sent to a prosperous Israel that kept its feasts and cheated the poor, and he told them what the day of the Lord would look like: "the sun shall go down at midday, and I will make the earth dark in the day of light". Their feasts would turn to mourning, and the mourning would be "as the mourning of an only son" (Amos 8:9-10). On the day of the Crucifixion it happened as written. It was the feast of the Pasch in Jerusalem, and at the sixth hour, noon, "there was darkness over the whole earth, until the ninth hour" (Matthew 27:45); Luke adds, "the sun was darkened" (Luke 23:45). The sun went down at midday, the feast became a mourning, and the one mourned was the only Son. Zacharias had seen the same grief: "they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son" (Zacharias 12:10), and St John quotes that verse at the foot of the Cross. The Fathers read Amos of Calvary with one voice. St Irenaeus says the prophet "plainly announced that obscuration of the sun which at the time of His crucifixion took place from the sixth hour onwards". Tertullian: "that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces." Lactantius and Rufinus say the same. St John Chrysostom adds that when Peter at Pentecost quoted Joel, "The sun shall be turned into darkness", he was "reminding them of the darkness which had lately occurred". The dark noon of Calvary is the first fulfilment of the darkened sky the prophets foretold, between the Cross and the last day. The Catechism sees the Church born in that hour: "The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus" (CCC 766).
Moral sense
The Fathers saw the Church in the moon. It has no light of its own; everything it gives, it receives from the sun. Origen says the disciples have a light "borrowed from the true sun, so that they are able to illuminate those who have no command of any spring of light in themselves." So when the Sun went dark on the Cross, the moon had nothing to shine with: the apostles had fled, and the Church's light seemed to fail. But in that same hour the Church was being born, from His opened side, in blood and water. The moon turned to blood, if we may read it so, is the Church receiving her light from then on through His Blood. That is our condition. Whatever light we give, we have borrowed, and it reaches us through the Cross. A Christian who forgets that shines with nothing; a Christian who remembers it can shine even in the dark, as Augustine says the Church still shines, when obscured, in those most firm in their attachment to her.
Anagogical sense
Three hours of dark at noon were the first of the signs. Peter saw the prophets' darkened sun begin at Pentecost, and the Apocalypse sees it completed when the sun becomes black and the moon becomes as blood at the end. But after the ninth hour the sun came back, and after the third day the Son rose. In the city that is coming there is no need of sun or moon, "for the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof". The borrowed light of the moon will be swallowed up in the Light it borrowed from, and nothing will ever go dark at midday again.
The Fathers
St Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.33.12: the prophets "plainly announced that obscuration of the sun which at the time of His crucifixion took place from the sixth hour onwards". Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 10: "For that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces". St John Chrysostom, Homily V on Acts: "reminding them of the darkness which had lately occurred". Origen, Commentary on John: the disciples "have a light, which is their own or borrowed from the true sun, so that they are able to illuminate those who have no command of any spring of light in themselves." St John Chrysostom, Homily LXXXVIII on Matthew, of the darkness in Egypt: "For indeed those events were a type of these."
Warrant
Patristic because the Gospels record the darkness without quoting Amos; St Irenaeus (Against Heresies IV.33.12), Tertullian (An Answer to the Jews 10; Against Marcion IV.42), Lactantius (Divine Institutes IV.19) and Rufinus (Commentary on the Creed 24) all read Amos 8:9 of it. The Greek adds weight: the Septuagint of Amos 8:10 has hos penthos agapetou, as the mourning of a beloved one, the word the Father uses of Christ at His baptism, ho huios mou ho agapetos. Zacharias 12:10 is scriptural, quoted in John 19:37. The reading of the moon as the Church is patristic (Origen, Commentary on John; St Augustine, Letter XCIII); applying it to the moon turned into blood of Joel 2:31 at Calvary is the entry's own meditation, not a Father's claim. A lunar eclipse on the evening of a proposed date of the Crucifixion is a modern astronomical hypothesis and is not relied on here.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 766.
The verses
Amos 8:9 · Amos 8:10 · Zacharias 12:10 · Matthew 27:45 · Luke 23:44 · Luke 23:45 · John 19:34
