They were gone. The house was empty. The dog was no consolation. Similarly, our gospel text is saddened by impending departure. The estrangement impends.
Long separation is immanent.
It will be a while before I share the table with you again. In Luke s narrative, our Lord blesses two cups. I suggest that normal usage would have treated them as a cup of joy, for the fruit of the field that gladdens our hearts, and a cup of sorrow, for our Lord s suffering sacrifice and the sadness of our separation from Him. In Episcopal theology and liturgy, they merge into one and only one cup. And in our eucharist, we seldom elevate the cup of joy, having intoned the blessing for the fruit of the field which gladdens the heart of man.