But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. St. Matthew (Matthew 24:29) has the word "immediately," before the words "after that tribulation."
If this word "immediately" is to be understood literally, then the things spoken of subsequently must be understood in a figurative and spiritual sense. But it would seem more natural to understand "immediately" according to the reckoning of him with whom "a thousand years are as one day."
Our Lord now passes away from the events connected with the overthrow of the Jewish polity, and proceeds to speak of things connected with the new dispensation. His mind is now turned to "the last time"—to the whole period between his first and his second advent.
The things towards which he was now looking belonged, not to the end of the Jewish dispensation, but to the end of the present age and the present dispensation. Eighteen centuries have passed since the destruction of Jerusalem; and more years, it may be, will come and go before the end.
Nevertheless, all this time, although it may seem long to us who are confined within the narrow limits of a short life, is nevertheless, when compared with the eternity of God, but as a moment. "The sun shall be darkened."
The signs here enumerated are mentioned elsewhere as the signs that would appear before the second coming of Christ. (See Joel 2:31 and Luke 21:25, Luke 21:26.) St. Augustine (Eph 80, 'Ad Hesychium') says, "The light of truth shall be obscured; because in the great tribulation that shall come on the world, many will fall from the faith, who had seemed to be bright and firm, like the sun and the stars."
"And the moon," that is, the Church, "shall not give her light."