On Saturday March 8th, 2014, Brother Innocent Smith O.P. (formerly Philip Smith, SGA Class of 2004) was ordained to the diaconate by the Bishop Daniel Thomas, Auxiliary Bishop of Philadelphia. The following morning Br. Innocent served his first Mass as deacon and preached the Gospel at St. Thomas Apostle Church in Washington DC.

Br. Innocent Smith was one of eight men who received Holy Orders that day. The Dominican community of the Eastern Provence celebrated the occasion in style by hosting an evening reception for the families and friends of those who had just been ordained. Among those who attended the event were Br. Innocent’s parents, Thomas and Marika Smith, his brother Andrew Smith, and long time friends of the academy Kirk and Kathy Kramer. Two former SGA classmates of Br. Innocent, Dr. Charles Prezzia and John Bloch, were also able to attend the ordination and express their support.

One of the highlights of the evening’s entertainment was a musical performance given by several young Dominicans of the studentate. It seems that the Dominicans have gotten there hands on some old St. Gregory’s song books and have started a folk music club that meets one evening per week to learn the old songs. Br. Innocent may or may not have been instrumental in all of this. It was especially edifying to hear voices that had been trained to chant in choir apply the same discipline and rigor that is usually reserved for sacred music to songs like ‘The Parting Glass’ and ‘Dick Darby.’ (“Dick Darby?” One of the brothers was over-heard to remark, “It’s about Baptism… I guess.”)

Philip Smith graduated from SGA in 2004. He enrolled in the University of Notre Dame the following Fall, taking a double major in Philosophy and Music. During his college years Philip discerned his vocation to the Order of Preachers. After Graduating from Noter Dame in 2008, Philip joined the Order’s Eastern Provence of St. Joseph as a Novice, taking the name in religion of Innocent after the first Dominican Pope Bl. Innocent the Fifth.

After a formational year at the Novitiate House near Columbus Ohio, Br. Innocent took temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and began his formal studies at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C. Br. Innocent has thrived at the House of Studies, and has been involved with several projects there in addition to his formal studies. These have included the publication of a new Dominican Hymnal and the re-founding of ‘Dominicana’ (www.dominicanablog.com) a print/blog journal of Dominican thought and theology that had been defunct since the nineteen-sixties.

In the Fall of 2013 Br. Innocent took his final Vows, and, as noted above he was ordained Deacon in March 2014. Please keep Brother Innocent in your prayers this year as he prepares for his ordination to the priesthood which is planed to take place in May 2015.

• Read the Ordination Story on the Dominican Friars Website
• See the Full Photo Gallery Here

The following is an excerpt from a talk given by our headmaster, Sean Fitzpatrick, during the banquet for St. Gregory’s feast day on March 12th, 2014.

Today is the Feast Day of Gregory the Great, patron of this school and of this community. There are many reasons why St. Gregory is our patron saint. His life reflected many of the ideals that direct our vision: fidelity to the Holy See, orthodoxy in doctrine, attachment to the traditional liturgy and sacred music, the preservation of classical education, and the list goes on. But there are reasons for his patronage that are harder to pinpoint because they are more mysterious – reasons rooted in the very reason why Gregory is a saint.

For instance, though Gregory was pope, and a great pope, he was first and foremost a monk. He was a monk even as pope, dedicated to an ascetic life and to the vibrant life of his community—the community of the Universal Church. He left a promising political career as the Prefect of Rome to become a monk—to embrace a simpler life, a life focused on God, community, and study.  We live a quasi-monastic life here and Gregory was fully a monk, making him a good abbot for us as he was for so many.

Another important reason why we call on Gregory to be our saint is that our education is one founded upon a dynamic love—a love and energy for things good, true, and beautiful.  St. Gregory was positively animated by a dynamic love that we can only hope to imitate—a dynamic love that was focused entirely on the desire for God. And it is upon this desire that we model our education.

Jean Leclerq, a Benedictine monk and theologian, once called St. Gregory the “Doctor of Desire.”  The Doctor of Desire.  What a surprising title for a Saint and a Pope, you might think.  The Doctor of Desire.  Or you could say, the Doctor of Love, or even the Love Doctor.  Why would someone refer to Saint Gregory with this surprising title?   The title refers to Gregory’s philosophy that asceticism was a preparation for the desire for God: a training, or cultivation, of desire.  Through prayerful meditation on Sacred Scripture, desire for God is sown in the heart under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit inspires our best thoughts, brings understanding, and enkindles and guides our deepest and most inward longings.  At the touch of the Holy Spirit the heart leaps up in yearning for God.  Gregory speaks of this experience as a colloquy or a conversation between God and man.  A conversation that begins with God’s word inflaming the desire of the heart, a gentle word that one must wait for, listen for.

There is a passage in the Book of Job that echoes Elijah’s famous experience where he searches for the Lord in a hurricane, in an earthquake, and in a fire, but only finds him in a gentle breeze.  Job reads, “There stood one whose countenance I knew not, an image before my eyes, and I heard the voice, as it were, of a gentle wind.” In this, this murmur, this hidden word, Gregory hears the opening of a lovers’ dialogue. “This inspiration touches the human mind,” he writes, “and by touching lifts it up and represses temporal thoughts, inflaming it with eternal desires… so that to hear the hidden word is to conceive the speech of the Holy Spirit in the heart.”

The cultivation of desire or the cultivation of the virtues of the heart that Gregory speaks of is the very essence of education.  Generally speaking, people will only do well if they have a will—a wanting, a desire—to do the thing at hand.  Consequently, education that does not engage the heart fails.  True education is an erotic endeavor—an attempt to awaken desire and the longing for ultimate consummation.  If wisdom is a beautiful woman, as we learn from Proverbs, then love must not only play a part, it must lead the way in guiding a youth to his proper fulfillment.

I would like to share a passage with you by Mr. Brendan Landell, one of our alumni and foremost thinkers:

The burden of true education, of education that truly “leads out,” begins with desire.  The roaring of Irish songs is far different from the chanting of Vespers.  But the reality encountered in the former springs from the same source as the latter, and possesses an additional perk: its appeal is more immediate to a young man exploding with energy and passion.  At St. Gregory’s, he hears Vespers also, within the background of a spiritual life during which he prays and often receives the Sacraments daily.  If he wants nothing good in his life, he can never be expected to want the best, if he loves nothing, he can never be expected to love Wisdom and Her Maker.  Furthermore, somewhere within that song, lurks another, a person wooing them, a bridge to another world, a world in which God dwells and is more visible.

Gentlemen of Gregory the Great, there stands before you one whose countenance you do not yet fully know.  An image before you eyes.  Hear the voice, hear the gentle wind.  It whispers to you in your songs, in your books, in your play, and in your friendships.  It is the voice of God calling you through the things of this world to the desire for him. Let us go gaily in the dark, our desire for Him as sharp as swords and as bright as song.  Gregory the Great pray for us!

On Valentine’s Day weekend, Gregory the Great Academy traveled west to Pittsburgh and Steubenville, Ohio to sing, juggle, and pray. We had a great time and want to share some photos with you from the trip.

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