Apparitions from heaven???

[Catholic_Lady]

I understand.

The thing is though, I just find it too much of a coincidence bc the children said something would happen at that same day and at pretty much that exact time even. If this was just an isolated event where people were going on about their daily lives and all of a sudden they saw the sun moving around through the sky just kind of randomly out of nowhere, I'd be a lot more skeptical that it was a miracle. 

But it's just the combination of everything that makes it convincing to me. The fact that it was predicted to almost the exact hour when it happened, the fact that it was seen by tens of thousands, including skeptics... the fact that it started and ended at the same time for everyone who saw it.... and even the wet clothes and wet ground became dry in seconds, as reported by many people. 

Those kids must have been really really lucky if they were just completely lying about the apparition of the Virgin Mary telling them something was going to happen at that same day at that same time... and then coincidentally enough there was something that was either the same mass hallucination or the same mass optical illusion by the thousands. Also, if this was just some illusion that happened because of the shape of the land, etc etc, then it seems like it would have happened there before and/or since then... and that people who lived in the area would be familiar with it. 

As I said, this is very convincing to me that it truly was a miracle that happened that day. But I'm not trying to get you guys to think it's convincing as well. It just simply makes more sense to me that it was a miracle than it does that it was some sort of elaborate coincidence in so many ways.

It wouldn't take much to make those kids believe in what they were being told... Rural Portugal was pretty much pastoral - no sophistication of any kind... Very religious to begin with, so, by default, gullible.
Curiously, on the day the sun was seen to wobble, there was no apparition... no lady, no angel... just the sun. It's as if it would be impossible to pull such a trick in front of all those people.

Eh, the Virgin Mary could have appeared herself instead of the sun thing, but I honestly think that would have been easier to pull off if it was some sort of magic trick and much more easily able to be explained away. I think the sun literally starting to move around in the sky and change colors and drying up puddles is a lot more shocking and convincing and difficult to pull off than if a lady or winged person were to show up claiming to be divine.