The day the sky went dark

He is tried at night, illegally, and sentenced by a governor who says three times that he finds no fault in him. Then a whip, a crown of thorns, and a walk to a hill outside the city where criminals were executed in public, on the main road, deliberately. Nailed there, his first recorded word is a prayer for the men holding the hammer: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He arranges care for his mother. He promises paradise to a dying thief who asks for nothing more than to be remembered. At noon the sky goes dark for three hours. He cries out the opening line of Psalm 22, and then: it is finished. The curtain in the temple that separated people from the holy place tears from top to bottom.