Florida Catholic | The Butcher: Father Craig Malzacher

MULTIMEDIA SPECIAL: Six New Priests: In their own words

ANA RODRIGUEZ–SOTO | FC

The Butcher

Father Craig Malzacher is former Winn–Dixie meat–cutter who considered opening up his own butcher shop.

ANA RODRIGUEZ–SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 05.16.08

MIAMI | Father Craig Malzacher’s mother, Mary Rose (their last name is German for “brewer of malt”), never imagined Craig would be the one chosen for the priesthood.

“I’m still surprised,” she said of the third oldest of her 10 children, who was born in Miami Beach and raised in Key Largo.

She said she figured one of her eight sons might become a priest. After all, “Ten children in this day and age (is not easy). I felt that the Lord had his reasons.”

But Craig was not the most studious of her sons – in fact, when he entered the seminary he was afraid that “I wasn’t going to be able to hack the academics.”

Like all the Malzacher children, he had started working at Winn-Dixie, just a mile and a half from his home, at the age of 15, moving up from bag boy to cashier and eventually to meat-cutter.

Being part of such a large family, “if they wanted $70 for sneakers, they had to work and earn it,” his mother recalled.

“I saw how the meat cutter is an excellent trade, a stable trade. They’re always going to be needed. I could definitely consider myself living out the rest of my life just cutting meat, being happy doing that,” Father Malzacher said.

But “the Lord was relentless,” he recalled. “He kept calling me. Finally I had to go.”

He toyed with the idea of joining a religious order, becoming a brother in order to avoid the academic challenge. His dad helped him change his mind.

“He said, ‘Just imagine. As a priest you’ll get to do the greatest thing that ever occurs on earth. You get to consecrate the Eucharist.”

In the seminary, Father Malzacher, now 30, discovered that philosophy and theology were “my academic loves. So I just excelled.”

His mother compared his vocation to the Old Testament story of how God chose David to be king of Israel. “It’s Biblical – the one in the field.”

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