Innocent Smith is a Dominican brother — devoted not to beer and baseball like many of his 24-year-old peers, but to serving God and preaching God’s word. He has given up much for his faithful pursuit but has gained a joy and clarity uncommon among people of any age. Smith spoke with The Washington Examiner about Lenten sacrifices and the blessings they can reveal to Christians preparing for the Easter celebration. He will lecture on the history, influence and meaning of Lenten Gregorian chants at 7:15 p.m. March 27 at Northeast D.C.’s Dominican House of Studies. Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a Christian by having been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and by having accepted that the one God who hasrevealed himself throughout historyhas now spokento us in Jesus Christ. Further, I’m a Catholic because I believe there’s a continuity between the church that Jesus instituted and the Catholic church today. And I’m a Dominican, which is not a faith, but a community approved by the church as an effective means of living out the faith.
Many people see Lent as a time to give up something — some food or habit they consider a vice. What else is there to Lent, and how else can Christians experience the season?
Lent has two fundamental characters to it — one is that it’s a preparation for the feast of Easter. The other main element is personal penance — particularly, it should be understood as being in communion with Christ. As we hear on the first day of Lent, Jesus goes into the desert where the Devil tempts him to turn stones into bread, but also with other temptations that are highly illustrative, such as power. We need to be very careful to think about that during Lent — our penances are not only giving up physical things, but restoring the proper relationships in our lives between ourselves and God, and ourselves and other people.
Additionally, just as Jesus goes into the desert during Lent, we can take the opportunity to detach ourselves from unnecessary attachments. Do I need to check my e-mail and Facebook 30 times per day? We can fast from unnecessary communication so we have more time for prayer and truly fruitful communication with those nearest us.
Intellectual study and contemplation are valued among Dominicans. How important are those pursuits to one’s actual faith?
St. Peter wrote that Christians should always be ready to make a defense for their faith, so since the beginning of the church there’s been an understanding that we need to prepare ourselves to respond intellectually to the needs of those we meet — not to prove the faith, but to respond to objections to the faith.
Study gives us the ability to have wisdom, which is to understand what will really help people live in conformity with the truth — and to help people understand most of all that when we are living in conformity with the truth, we are free.
Many of your practices and chants used today come from ancient traditions. What meaning can the past bring to our present?
They remind us that human nature is perennial. Although sometimes the exact circumstances have changed, we still struggle with the same issues of sin and death that have been present since the first humans. The chants and traditions help us to understand that there are ways already revealed to us by God of dealing with these issues.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that God, who in Himself is perfect and needs nothing, decided freely to invite men and women to take part in His own inner life, the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because the first man and woman sinned, God was willing to go so far as to take on human flesh — to become one of us to bring us back into union with Him. Through that incarnation we are given the chance to become children of God, in relationship with God. This affects everything in our lives. Understanding that the world is aimed at communion with God, we need to overcome through God’s grace whatever is disordered in the world, and not at its source, and to accept the grace to enter into this life of union with God.
– Leah Fabel
