The Deacon's Bench
Rockville Centre’s Bishop John Barres recently issued the letter to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Mets winning the World Series, using the mantra of that moment to send a message to his flock: “Ya gotta believe”:
Why would a Catholic bishop write a Pastoral Letter on the 1969 New York Mets? The world of sports is a critical part of the human experience. Look at the struggle and hard work of the athletes and the passion of the fans. It should be no surprise that the masterful preacher and evangelizer Saint Paul used insights and imagery from sports in his letters – he spoke of “running the race” and “fighting the fight” (2 Timothy 4:7). He admired the discipline and perseverance of athletes and held them up as a model for Christian discipleship (1 Corinthians 9:24-26). Pope Francis, commenting in a document entitled Giving the Best of Yourself — On the Christian Perspective of Sport and of the Human Person said: “Sport is a very rich source of values and virtues that help us to become better people. Like the athlete during training practicing sport helps us to give our best to discover our limits without fear, and to struggle daily to improve.”
Sports, the Pope stressed, is a meeting place where people of all levels and social conditions come together to reach a common goal and inspire the community. The 1969 Miracle Mets achieved just that!
Pope Saint John Paul II said this to a group of athletes in 1979: “In our time, organized sport sometimes seems conditioned by the logic of profit, of the spectacular…it is also to proclaim and to witness to the humanizing power of the Gospel with regard to the practice of sport, which if lived in accordance with the Christian outlook, becomes a ‘generative principle’ of profound human relations and encourages the building of a more serene and supportive world.”
The experience of the 1969 NY Mets has something to teach the Catholic Church on Long Island 50 years later in 2019. The very essence of our Catholic faith is that there is always a light in the darkness – a light that the darkness cannot understand – and the history of the Catholic Church repeatedly shows that hope can spring from the most unlikely sources. Drawing on the inspiration of the 1969 Miracle Mets, the Catholic Church on Long Island can experience a new era of Catholic Evangelization and dramatic missionary growth against all the odds and expectations, and even become a model for the country!
Ya Gotta Believe, Ya Gotta Believe – that together we can be the Holy Spirit’s instruments of generating something new and exciting, a dramatic missionary growth that expresses the missionary identity and nature of our Church from Elmont to Montauk and around the world. In short, Ya gotta truly believe and deeply believe in what we believe as Catholics.
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