Psalms 22:2

‘Oh My God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer, and in the night season, and am not silent.'

For the first time in His life Jesus had become aware of what to us is commonplace, the sense of separation from the Father. He had become aware of what it meant to pray knowing that there seemed to be no response. Never before had He prayed and faced this stony silence. It is no wonder that He found it unnerving. But there was a sense in which He had to bear the burden alone, for He was dying in His humanness, and the Father had no humanness. So both through the hours of light until midday, and then through the following hours of darkness, His cry continued. Even at this final hour He was not silent, but His Father was. The heavens were seemingly closed to His plea. But let us not overlook the fact that Heaven too was distraught. The angels could not bear the sight. And yet the Father held back His comfort from His Son, in order that His Son might bear our sin to the full. For He could not condone the sin that He was bearing (the sin that was our sin). This was the cup that Jesus had chosen to drink, and He had to drink it alone.