[44] It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon [45] because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. [46] Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"; and when he had said this he breathed his last. [47] The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, "This man was innocent beyond doubt." [48] When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts; [49] but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.
(CCC 1019) Jesus, the Son of God, freely suffered death for us in complete and free submission to the will of God, his Father. By his death he has conquered death, and so opened the possibility of salvation to all men. (CCC 603) Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned (Cf. Jn 8:46). But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34; Ps 22:2; cf. Jn 8:29). Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God "did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all", so that we might be "reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom 8:32; 5:10). (CCC 730) At last Jesus' hour arrives (Cf. Jn 13:1; 17:1): he commends his spirit into the Father's hands (Cf. Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30) at the very moment when by his death he conquers death, so that, "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father" (Rom 6:4) he might immediately give the Holy Spirit by "breathing" on his disciples (Cf. Jn 20:22). From this hour onward, the mission of Christ and the Spirit becomes the mission of the Church: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20:21; cf. Mt 28:19; Lk 24:47-48; Acts 1:8). (CCC 602) Consequently, St. Peter can formulate the apostolic faith in the divine plan of salvation in this way: "You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake" (1 Pet 1:18-20). Man's sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death (Cf. Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:56). By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21; cf. Phil 2:7; Rom 8:3).
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