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March 27, 2024Father Don Wolf detailed a mission for priests to bring the reconciling love of the Father to the world, standing before priests, deacons, Archbishop Coakley and others March 26 during his opening remarks inside The Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oklahoma City.
They were gathered, ahead of the annual Chrism Mass, to celebrate the newest recipient of the Blessed Stanley Rother Faithful Shepherd Award: Father Joseph Jacobi.
“Joe Jacobi has lived this mystery for the years of his priesthood,” Father Wolf said. “His work with Cursillo and the wonderful talks he has given over many years, his commitment to the growth of the Men’s Conference, his years of example to the numerous seminarians who have stayed with him, his decades of service to the Spanish-speaking, they all express the gift of reconciliation.”
Father Jacobi, ordained on June 1, 1991, has served five parishes – Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church in Edmond, Saint Peter Catholic Church in Guymon, Pastor Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Altus, Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City and his recent assignment at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang – along with missions.
At every stop, parishioners have embraced Father Jacobi, relating to his gentle, warm and caring way of ministering. He is a builder, too, of spiritual growth and parish growth, overseeing the construction of new churches in each of his last two assignments, Saint Eugene and Holy Spirit.
And he has shepherded many in those churches, as well as through the expanding Cursillo movement in Oklahoma, the surging Catholic Men’s Conference and in various other roles, having served as chaplain for Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School and the University of Central Oklahoma, Vicar for Hispanic Ministry, Vicar for Region V, Consultor and member of the Presbyteral Council and with the Archdiocese Review Board.
“We don’t measure our successes in square footage occupied or contracts signed or dollars collected or spent,” Father Wolf said, “but we do know what we see. And in seeing we understand that the greatest success he has achieved is that Joe’s gifts have been given to all of us.”
Father Jacobi is the 22nd recipient of the Blessed Stanley Rother Faithful Shepherd Award.
“Like another among us who poured out his life in service to the Lord and in the priesthood he lived, who achieved the extraordinary by applying the gift of his ordinary talents, Joe Jacobi has been for us an ordinary witness of extraordinary events,” Father Wolf said, “and remains for us a promise of what a pastor can be.
“He is the embodiment of the great aphorism he has preached a hundred times in Cursillo. That is, ‘Christ and I are an overwhelming majority.’”
John Helsley is the editor of the Sooner Catholic.
Fr. Joseph Jacobi received the Bl. Stanley Rother Faithful Shepherd Award on March 26 at The Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oklahoma City. Pictured is Fr. Joseph Jacobi, Archbishop Coakley and Fr. Don Wolf. Photos Chris Porter/Sooner Catholic.
