To suggest that the grief of Christ issues from his perfect wisdom and charity would confirm that true sorrow is human and therefore cannot correspond to despair, since the hopelessness of despair would yield nothing about which to sorrow. If life is meaningless, there is no reason to mourn. Truth is what makes grief authentic and real, and so it follows that Truth Incarnate, come down from heaven to our vale of tears, would grieve at the highest pitch. The “tragic experience of the most complete desolation” 49 depends on “the knowledge and experience of the Father.” 50Or as Adrienne von Spar puts it: “The Father is never more present than in this absence on the Cross.