Sometimes, I find insights into God’s great mercy in the strangest of situations.
Take the Chicago Cubs, for instance.
Just take them, please. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist…)
As you may have heard, the Loveable Losers are losers no more. It required the full complement of seven games, plus extra innings…but the Cubs finally managed a World Series win in 2016.
Not that anyone’s counting, but it had been 108 years since the franchise had last accomplished such a feat. That’s a stretch of futility I find hard to imagine, living – as I do – in Baseball Heaven.
Five years without a win…and already looking a little tired…
Heck, it’s been just five years since my St. Louis Cardinals won it all…but I think I’m about ready to chuck my game-used Rally Squirrel Towel. It’s long past time, I figure, to fill my trophy space with some new Cardinal championship bling…
Ah, the perils of following the National League’s most successful franchise.
But I digress.
This blog post is supposed to be about the Cubs, and the merciful end of their mind-boggling losing streak.
108 years worth of losing. As I said, that’s hard to imagine.
But if “decades of losing” were “coins,” it’d be sort of like the experience of the daffy gal we encountered at Mass today in the gospel passage from Luke:
“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?
And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’
Over-the-top rejoicing: I guess I can sort of understand that concept better now, in the light of the Cubs and their desperately-longed-for World Series win. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. So when at last the coin turns up, there’s cause for celebration.
God’s desire for each of us (yes, even Cub fans) is just like that, Jesus says—no matter how many coins we’ve dropped…or for how many decades we’ve been wandering around, lost.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 
Making me think the end is near. . . when H*** freezes over. . . the Cubs win the series. . .
I’d bet that you’re not alone in that sentiment, Mike.
But is the Cubs’ win a sign of the ‘End of Times’…or simply a manifestation of the Jubilee Year of Mercy?
Inquiring minds want to know…
And as for the Cards: Let’s raise the traditional Cubs refrain…’Just wait ’til next year…’ 😉
Well written John. Congratulations to all Cub fans from a fan of the team with the now current longest stretch without a World Series victory – the Cleveland Indians.
Thank you, Joe…and Go, Tribe — unless of course they’re playing the Cardinals in the WS…