by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Like so many people across North America, today my family and I got to witness the solar eclipse. As we waited for almost totality with our solar glasses on, my husband noted that a solar eclipse is recorded in the Coptic Orthodox Synaxarium as a miracle, and we chuckled about it. Yet what we now know of as a natural phenomenon was, for most ancient people, an understandably frightening experience. The account in the Synaxarium tells us how the people of Egypt reacted to a total solar eclipse in 1242 AD:

The sun became gradually dark until darkness spread everywhere and the stars were seen in the daytime. People lit lamps and were struck with great fear. They cried out to God the Almighty with all their hearts, asking for His compassion and mercy. The Lord had mercy upon them, removed their fear and the darkness was lifted all at once and the sun appeared to light up the world, and the lamps were extinguished. That occurred from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. The people glorified God who was long suffering towards them and did not deal with them according to their sins but according to His mercy and patience.

https://st-takla.org/books/en/church/synaxarium/02-babah/09-baba-eclipse.html

We laughed about this, knowing what actually happened: the moon moved into their line of sight, blocked the sun for a time causing the earth to darken, and then continued to move along its path, bringing light to the world again. When I found the entry in the Synaxarium to show my children, one of them wondered if it should be removed, knowing what we now know: that the eclipse is not a sign of God’s wrath upon us, nor is its ending a sign of God’s mercy on us.

But that’s if the miracle we are reading has to do with the eclipse. There is another miracle in this story: it’s the miracle of God’s people turning to Him when something incomprehensible and frightening was happening to them. Light became darkness, and so they turned to God. And when the light returned, they thanked Him, seeing its return as God’s loving mercy and patience towards them.

The miracle is repentance. And the result of repentance is that darkness turns to light. If it happens naturally, it’s because that is God’s nature: compassionate, merciful, long-suffering. For those thirteenth century Egyptians, the world for an hour seemed overshadowed with darkness, but behind that darkness was always the bright, shining light of the sun. When eclipses happen now, we look towards the sun in awe, but rarely in repentance. We take it for granted, now, that the sun shines there behind the darkness. Those thirteenth century Egyptians might inspire us, then, not to take this grace for granted. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15)

Image credit: NASA (https://science.nasa.gov/gallery/eclipses/)