Homily for the Priestly Ordination of Isaac Joseph McCracken

May 24, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Numbers 11:11b-12, 14-17, 24-25
Psalm 111:1, 2, 3, 4
Acts 20:17-18a, 28-32, 36
John 12:24-26

In today’s second reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear Saint Paul’s farewell address to the local Church of Ephesus gathered together: Apostles, presbyters, and faithful. Saint Paul with a heart full of hope directly instructs the presbyters of Ephesus, “Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that He acquired with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own group men will come forth perverting the truth to draw the disciples away from them.”

We are especially attentive to these words today as we gather as the local church of Fort Worth, bishop, presbyters and faithful, our hearts brimming with joy and hope because of the ordination of a new presbyter from among us, Isaac Joseph McCracken. The inspired words of the Apostle admonish us, bishop, presbyters, and faithful, to be accountable and to care for each other, and for priests to do so out of love for Christ and love for His People whom Christ acquired as His own through the shedding of His Blood.

As the faithful of our local Church, clergy and laity, we pray for Isaac McCracken, our relative and friend, and as we the presbyters of the local Church of Fort Worth prepare to welcome him to the brotherhood of priests, made brothers only by Christ and His mission of oversight and care for His flock, we too are mindful of the warning of Saint Paul to be on guard for the contemporary wolves and self-serving shepherds. The contemporary threat to the flock of Christ, over whom we have been entrusted with pastoral care and protection, is the threat of disunity and polarization caused by the perversion of the Gospel for power and prosperity.

This very real threat begins with fear and a lack of faith in Christ and spreads among the Body of Christ with rancor, slander, and disobedience. The temptation on the part of the disciple of Christ, clergy, religious, or laity, is to be lured into the dark alley of the tirade that offers no light, no clarity, and no charity, but only heat, confusion, and acrimony.

Christ has given us priests to the Church as shepherds after His own heart. Therefore, we priests are called to protect His flock by outflanking and undercutting the devious wolves of today not through greater cunning, but through guileless simplicity and the selfless love of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught and has shown us that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” We priests must be willing to be that grain of wheat. We must encourage each other in this unique vocation that requires us to be emptied of our willfulness and reliant upon the Holy Spirit.

The howling of the savage wolves cull the Lord’s flock by frightening the sheep into futile attempts to save their lives in this world on the world’s terms: greed and wrath, envy and pride, lust, gluttony, and sloth; resulting in their estrangement from God and their exploitation of the poor and the weak among us. Our only response as Christ’s priests is to love the sheep and to set an example for the flock by serving Christ and following Him, confident that despite our weakness, where Christ is, there also we must be, speaking the truth and loving as He loves with mercy and a ready willingness to forgive. We accomplish this only through the Holy Spirit by admonition, advocacy, and mercy on behalf of those who have no voice but Christ’s.

The message of Saint Paul to the presbyters of Ephesus is the inspired Word of God. It is perennial. It is a message that applies to us, the priests of the presbyterate of Fort Worth. The pastoral ministry of a priest is to establish, maintain, and repair the bonds between Christ and His flock through our loving example as men of Eucharistic prayer, our preaching, and our merciful presence in the confessional. Our mission is to foster the self-emptying of the flock that enables the Church to cease grasping at the false gods of sin that the devious aggrandize. We as priests, even as fragile and earthen vessels, are called to lead by setting an example of discipleship, selfless service, and the mercy required of all of the baptized.

We priests can only do this if we are reminded daily that Christ has loved each of us before we have loved Him, and we can only make a glad return to the Lord for His call to us by loving His People as He loves them. This requires holiness. For us to be filled with holiness of life requires the dying of self, exemplified by the grain of wheat. The witness of so many holy priests in our own lives and throughout history shows us that this dying to self can look as subtle as inconvenience to one’s plans or as bold as enduring attacks on one’s character or even one’s very life.

Brother priests, as we welcome Father Isaac McCracken into our presbyteral ranks today, it is imperative that we heed again the words of Saint Paul. Let us care for each other and watch over ourselves so that we might care for the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed us overseers. We must lead first as servants. Let us remind each other by word and example that the flock entrusted to us is the Church of God that Christ mercifully acquired with His own Precious Blood. The Church is His and not ours. As His priests, we belong to Him and not ourselves. The only bond that can endure is the bond of authentic love revealed mercifully in its fullness by the Cross of Jesus Christ.