Just passing something on to you for your consideration on this Orthodox Good Friday. An Orthodox friend sent me this photo of a rainbow around the sun. It appeared at 3pm, the hour that according to Scripture and Tradition, Jesus Christ died on the Cross. It was taken by a relative in Atlanta today. Friend said it was also seen by a relative there. I darkened the original photo slightly to give the circular rainbow more definition. This is called a sun halo, and it’s a natural meteorological phenomenon, though rare. Still, 3pm on Good Friday is quite some timing.

Meanwhile, today on Mount Athos, the Greek Orthodox monastic enclave, this miracle happened today:

Strange days indeed.

UPDATE: A reader says that he read a report in Greek media that the bleeding icon is inside a chapel at a nursing home there. If so, then with nursing homes being places of extraordinary death and suffering from Covid-19, then the miracle can be interpreted as a sign that Christ suffers with them.

I certainly believe that some claimed miracles are fake. I have seen this happen personally. One is not wrong to approach with skepticism. But sometimes you really can’t explain these things. In those cases, I find that there are two kind of people in the world: the kind who see something like this, and say, “Why would God have done something like that? If he wanted to show those people that He was with them, why didn’t He choose some other way, or why didn’t He just stop the virus, or why didn’t H