Wardour Day of Recollection: Incense
The Grand Priory held its monthly Day of Recollection for September at All Saints chapel of New Wardour Castle, by kind permission of the trustees of this beautiful place.
The day was led by Fr Stephen Morrison O.Praem., who gave two beautiful conferences on Incense - why is it used in church, what it means, and how understanding can be useful to our prayer life and participating in the Holy Mass.
We are grateful to Fr Stephen for allowing us to publish his talk below, accompanied by some pictures of the chapel and Mass, celebrated on the feast of St Wenceslaus of Bohemia.
Dirigatur oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo:
“Let my prayer arise before you like incense.” (Ps. 141:2)
I’d like to speak to you all today about incense. A strange topic, you might think, for a Day of Recollection? Well, the theme was in fact a helpful suggestion (so you can blame a holy confrere), and I’d like to provide you with something basically catechetical – the explanation of a symbol and how/why we use it – to draw us into various deeper points of reflection on the nature of God and of ourselves. It’s perhaps more interesting, on occasions such as this one, to start with the unexpected, or apparently off-topic, and see just how very important or apposite our reflections can become. I’ll let you be the judge of that, though. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the ride and find it profitable.
Firstly, just a brief outline of the topic, before we look at its various aspects in greater depth, this morning and then this afternoon.
It’s fair to say that in Catholic practice, incense is reserved to the more solemn liturgical occasions, in places where there are enough servers for all the ceremonial roles. Some country parishes only see a thurible once in a blue moon; perhaps, at a funeral Mass, or on great feasts. But given that the Solemn High Mass, strictly speaking, is the “norm” – and ‘low Mass’ or sung Masses with reduced ceremonies are a permitted deviation from the norm, we can still say that incense is integral to the Catholic liturgy. Not that you would think so, from the sometimes-hostile reception that the sight of a smoking thurible causes to congregations little-used to seeing one. There still exists the phenomenon known to many clergy as “the protestant cough”… as soon as a thurible is lit and loaded with incense, some harridan on the front pew begins to protest with great spluttering and wheezing, in an attempted plea for mercy and air… this usually incites the thurifer, with a naughty grin, to create more smoke, and causes great eye-rolling (hopefully unseen from the pews) on the part of the priest celebrant! Genuinely, some people are not comfortable with the use of smoke in the Mass, but its use is not only normative, it also links us to the Temple liturgy when God required of his people the use of incense in sacrifice, and distinguishes us from the pagan religions who used incense idolatrously. Nor is it merely decorative. Incense is symbolic both in its burning and in its effect; the use of frankincense – a precious commodity in the ancient world, and not cheap even today – is already a sacrifice, of a monetary kind, purchased for God, even before it is consumed by fire. Then it is burnt, that is, totally offered, by being spread over burning charcoals. The symbols of gift and of consummation are then crowned with the symbolism of the sweet-smelling smoke – evoking ethereal, other-worldly holiness, masking all worldly or ordinary malodorous influences, seeming simultaneously to mask our vision of the holy things, and lead us to a greater vision of them; then the smoke rising upwards becomes symbolic of prayer, and its gentle settling back downwards in the air symbolises the return gift of grace descending upon us.
Incense is used principally to honour God (we might think especially of its use when honouring the Blessed Sacrament, at Mass or at Benediction) but also to reverence images of God or of the Saints, and indeed the bodies of our fellow men – both the living, and the dead: the corpses of our loved ones are incensed during their funerals, but the bodies of the living are too – clergy and laity alike. We are all honoured, as images of the living God, with an offering of incense. We will come to the various scriptural references that are relevant to our reflections, but let us first note that the book of Revelation refers to incense rising as “the prayers of the saints,” and that the psalmist asks that his prayer may waft before God like incense, and that the raising of his hands may be accepted as an evening sacrifice of praise. We are talking about something elemental to our ancestors; and it is, of course, a sacramental – an object blessed for the worship of God and the honouring of his holy ones – which is in itself a symbol as well as being a potential channel of grace. Rather than inviting a protestant cough, it ought to invite a certain awe, and a “taking in” – if not an actual “breathing-in” – of what we are witnessing, in a spirit of devotion and reverence. Outsider witnesses to our rites often note this atmosphere of reverence. The use of incense is almost by definition solemn, special, and requires some training and care to perform. Countless sanctuary carpets bear witness to careless thurible-waving, as charcoals leave a permanent burn on priceless woven rugs, or on acrylic flooring, alike. Incense boats have often accidentally spilled over too, causing the shoes of the ministers to crunch over the grains… what altar server has not witnessed that particular nightmare scenario, or felt the incense grains embed themselves in their shoe soles, again sometimes damaging the flooring… then again, swinging the thurible, both in the Eastern and Western Rites, entails a certain art, and requires a certain confident skill; the thurifer’s swing thus becomes a ceremonial in itself, a herald of holiness in a procession, a call to adoration at the sanctuary steps, and an invitation to honour and respect the holiness of the body, as well as of the soul, when used outside the sanctuary or for images, bodies, or other sacramentals such as fonts, candles, graves, or other objects to be blessed.
Aside from the smoke, of course, there is the sweet-perfumed smell. Sometimes the smell of a church is dusty old books or worn-out kneelers; at Christmas, it’s the smell of hay in the manger, or pinecones, that hits us; at Easter, perhaps, the smell of brass polish and voluptuous lilies in splendid arrangements; often, on ordinary days, it is the lingering sweetness of smoke, both of candles and of incense, that catches us as we enter the church. Expensive incense is often heavily scented and rather beautiful both when burnt and when lingering afterwards (what pipe smokers refer to as the “room notes”). Cheap incense is often acrid, or tarry, leaving a rather unpleasant odour behind; one doesn’t want the smell of charcoal to pervade; a good incense burns happily on it and makes one forget that the charcoal was there at all… a bad one almost produces the opposite effect. A good incense is also one which is sufficiently ground down; nothing produces attractive smoke more than a dusty incense, chunky bits mixed with powdered bits. It’s all quite an art. Even in that, there is a lesson… but God accepts it all, even if the harridans on the front pew think otherwise, or write angry letters to the bishop complaining about it.
Let’s start with the scent, and our God-given sense of smell. For we see incense both burning and rising, and perhaps hear it crackle in the thurible, but we mostly sense it through our noses. And since it is a commonplace that during the liturgy all our senses may be engaged in worship, it is perhaps incense which is most obviously the object of our sense of smell.
Scent, in terms of perfume, is, as we know, a multi-billion-pound industry. The modern obsession with cleanliness has brought to society odours of its own, as well as having eliminated other, less desirable ones. And smell is subjective of course. The smell of bleach might make some people happy with the idea of cleanliness, and make others wretch at the whiff of chemical sterility; then again, context is everything – there are sanitary reasons for wanting to smell a whiff of Dettol in certain places. The etymology of “Malaria” suggests that disease is spread in contexts of bad air, or malodorous surroundings; while “Buenos Aires” – ironically for a smoky city – heralds a haven of healthiness. Body odours are perhaps more controlled in today’s world, compared with descriptions of, say, the court of King Louis XIV (let alone even earlier times) when nosegays and flower oils and pot-pourri and pomanders and countless other sweet-smelling aids were used to mask, or help one to ignore, the odours of sweat, excrement, mould, sickness, or the detritus of the table, farm, or bedchamber. If you lost your sense of smell during a bad cold, or with Covid, perhaps, you will know what it is to be nose-blind… to quote one of the adverts for deodorants, or air-fresheners today – I think one of which famously laments the teenage boy’s “nose-blindness” as his poor mother tries to counter the effects of sweaty sports gear, dirty sheets, or his obliviousness to basic hygiene. Perhaps this is too harsh an assumption, based I daresay on the idea that boys smell of “slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails,” while girls smell of “sugar and spice and all things nice,” as I seem to remember Granny telling us. Our awareness of smells, though, is one of the motivations beneath all fragrance advertising. And then there are the perfume adverts themselves – trying to express in colour and two-dimensional imagery the effect, or nature, of their particular scent; whether it’s a lake full of flower petals, or a horse running through a dark stream, a mermaid-like supermodel emerging from an infinity pool (usually with a sparse amount of clothing for the time of day), or a hunter looking refreshingly clean in spite of everything, adverts try to appeal through our vision to the world of fragrance that they are selling us. After all, these companies know that certain combinations of smell signify to us luxury, elegance, sophistication, or sensual allure.
I wonder, do we ever think about how God may use our sense of smell to draw us to Himself, and to the contemplation of heavenly things? Think of your favourite smells, or scents. How might God use them for a higher purpose? Is not the sweet smell of our favourite food, for example, not only a natural instinct to feed ourselves healthily, but also the provoking within us of a kind of yearning to be filled? Deep down, that yearning is not only for food, but for a more primordial nourishment – the desire to be fed not just naturally, but supernaturally. And is not the sweet smell of flowers, trees, woodland and the ocean, to varying degrees an invitation to see the delightfulness of the Creator, as much as that of the Creation? And is not the lingering scent of a departed loved one on their clothes or possessions a real reminder of their presence, and of the need to pray for them? Of course, there are foods that taste delicious but which smell awful (most of the best cheeses) and there are natural smells (sulphur, for example, or the pigsty) which do not exactly entice us, just as there are some smells which our instincts use to warn us of some unhealthiness or unsuitability, some danger or potential harm. The smelling-salts (a staple, I presume, in most of the Order’s Dames’ handbags?) prove that ammonia produces such a strong reaction when we sense it that our bodies leap to attention as if to avoid it. But there is, as ever, a deeper analogy to be drawn from our bodies. Our creation is complex, designed by a Provident and wise God, who gave us the five external senses – as well as our interior gifts – to perceive Him and His revelation more clearly, and, ultimately, lead us to salvation. We are, after all, designed to go to heaven BODY and SOUL – not merely by the assent of our reason, or our will, but by Faith, submitting our whole selves, body and soul, to God. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, the senses speak through the body to the soul – so while he recognises the importance of the physical organs of sight, touch, smell, taste and sound, for him the senses themselves are closer to the soul than to the body. He sees each of them as being channels through which we can receive grace and perceive heavenly realities, in the sense that the external senses serve the interior senses of the soul (imagination, common sense, estimation and memory). He also points out that our glorified bodies in heaven will have a perfection of the senses – including, for our purposes, smell – though he is not certain how each may be used in heaven…but there, he says, they will be capable of far subtler distinctions, and greater perception.
Since we’re on Aquinas, I found recently an advert for scented candles, by a Catholic firm of chandlers called “Corda” who sell a candle named “Summa: inspired by St Thomas Aquinas.” I think St Thomas would be amused by this – at least, I presume so. I imagine it smells awful (the only scented candles I like are Bamford’s excellent range of rather expensive but vastly superior candles – which eliminate my tobacco smoke and leave a very pleasing “room note” behind. No, sadly Lord and Lady Bamford are not sponsoring this Day of Recollection, and I am not being remunerated for this product-placement within my talk). Anyway, the Summa candle is advertised as having scholastic scents of books, ink, and straw… not particularly enticing, though it is sold as being “nuanced with notes of dark musk, teakwood, vetiver, cade, and cedarwood.” But it was the comments/reviews section that intrigued me. The company is, of course, American. So, I imagine, is their clientele. Arthur wrote “The smell of Summa is like a slice of heaven on earth.” Rebecca, who says her son is named after St Thomas, notes “I love that they can provide an olfactory way to connect with learning, books, and peace.” Savannah said “With each flicker, it ignites reflection and coziness, creating the perfect ambiance for tranquil evenings at home. Personally, I adore lighting it while delving into my Bible; it infuses my space with immense joy!” Finally, a client who rejoices in the name of Marje Sotiroff, said: “I love the idea of bringing the saints into my presence by the smell of your wonderful candles.”
There is a serious point here – smells can, in context, bring realities before our minds. Think how closely a smell is often connected to a memory, or rather, how a particular memory is sometimes inextricably linked in our minds to a particular smell, good or bad, and often from childhood; we have spoken about the general smell of churches, but isn’t there something about this sense which, if we are blessed with it, can evoke extraordinary feelings, memories, or moods? Somehow, a holy smell, a blessed odour, might be the best way to identify, for our weak nature, the presence of God. And God clearly wants to exploit the pleasure and relief we often get from nice smells, as the book of Proverbs says: “Oil and perfume make the heart glad, but the soul is torn by trouble.” So how does God allow us to glimpse HIM by smell?
In our baptism, the “Ephphata” ceremony – especially in the traditional rite – invites God to bless, and indeed, open up, our senses. In the old rite, the priest touched the eyes, ears and mouth of the catechumen, saying “Ephphata – quod est, adaperire; that is, be thou opened…” before touching the nostrils and saying “in odorem suavitatis… unto the odour of sweetness about thee.” At the other “book-end” of life, the ceremonies of Extreme Unction provide a suitable echo of what was performed at Baptism: traditionally, we receive, at the end of life, a pardon for each of the senses: the eyes, lips, ears, nose, and limbs, are anointed while saying “through this holy anointing, may the Lord pardon whatever sins you have committed through your sense of speech/hearing/smell/touch/sight, etc.” These ceremonies, in the sacramental context, point out to us that Christ, through his Church, wishes to open up our senses and bless them for use – while also admitting that we can mis-use them as well as use them wisely. How, exactly, we might sin through our nostrils, is something worth considering: perhaps it is how we react to sense information that is really the point here – and that’s what St Thomas thought too. Furthermore, the senses are also used in a metaphorical sense – we refer to the “odour of sanctity”, but to the “stench of sin”. We use these terms metaphorically, but we know there is a literal sense of each too, in our human reality. The stench of sin is really a way of bringing home to us the reality that the smell of decay, particularly the extreme unpleasantness of a rotting corpse, is indicative of the punishment that death is, due to sin. To live in sin, then, is to be like the pharisees, whited sepulchres, perhaps polished on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones. Only the sinless Christ, in his Resurrection, escapes the tomb one day earlier than Lazarus, whom he raised from the four-day stench of decay; and apart from Christ, only Our Lady, the sinless Virgin, was spared the decay of the tomb at her death – but we have the hope of the resurrection of the dead, a hope which is reinforced whenever the bodies of the saints are excavated and the phenomenon of “osmogenesia” or “myroblysia” is experienced: what we commonly call “the odour of sanctity” – a phenomenon surrounding either the immediate aftermath of the death of a saint, or the sweet smell – often floral – emanating from their excavated relics, which has always been interpreted by the Church as a sign of divine favour, of blameless life and a holy passage through death to eternity, and a collateral sign of a saint’s being already in the bliss of heaven. Just read the accounts of the deaths of St Antony of Padua and St Therese of Lisieux, or of the re-discovery of the bodies of martyrs, or St Bernadette, and many, many others. Then there is the experience of a sweet smell in the public square as Madame Elisabeth was guillotined in Paris, proof to many witnesses of her innocence at that awful event, as well as the smell that emanated from mystic saints, especially stigmatists, including Padre Pio. Some who invoke the intercession of St Pio or of Sainte-Therese today experience their favours through a sense of smelling roses. I have personally met some devout people for whom this was the case.
Seen in the light of what we have discussed so far, the use of sweet-smelling incense may be, for us as worshippers, a huge gift of mercy from God, who instructs us to use it in his worship to evoke, in some way, his Divine Presence, remind us of heaven, and draw us out of the “usual” smells of the world, into a haven of peace. If we commit it to our memories, then an even greater mercy is the habitual reminder, whenever we then experience it, of that same holiness we once glimpsed and enjoyed. If our souls are fervently aflame on Monday, but dry and listless by Friday, then the incense at High Mass on Sunday might serve to remind our tired souls that we are in the presence of the same God who both provides us with consolation and with the trials of patient suffering; and that we are in the presence of the same Divine Sacrifice of Calvary as we were the week before… that once again, as the incense reminds us, here heaven is touching earth, and the veil is lifted, and the cloud of His glorious presence is again revealed to us….
We have started with the very human, rather than the Divine – we have begun with our sense perception, and the ways in which God perhaps has designed and used both what we sense, and how we sense it, to speak to our souls. Now let us turn to the nature of incense, and to the Divine Command to use it. We will see what he expected of old, from the priests of the Old Covenant, and what expects now from the priests of the New Covenant, those alteri Christi who serve in His sanctuary today, in the person of His Son.
Before that, however, let us deal swiftly with one human consideration of liturgical incense that links to our sense of unpleasant smells. Yes, of course, incense has a practical use too – especially in former times, in the case of pilgrims, or the unwashed poor – for masking the smells of massed humanity coming together in an inside space. Yet this use remains secondary. The famous “botafumeiro” (the vast, ceiling-hanging thurible) of Santiago de Compostela is a reminder of this… of course, its primary use is the honour of St James and a symbolic offering of many pilgrims’ prayers and efforts, as well as being an impressive spectacle to cheer the tired eyes of weary pilgrims in an unforgettable moment of exultant prayer. But yes, it is also of great benefit in scenting the church heavily by a purifying smoke which not only masks the odours of all those tired feet and bodies, but also – it was thought – cleaned the air of infections, and actually brought about a kind of disinfection, bestowing a sort of blessing in itself.
And when it comes to the Old Testament, one only has to imagine the Temple Mount, smelling and very much looking like an abattoir, such was the amount of blood of animals spilled out everywhere, not to mention the burning of fats, entrails, feathers and bones, at least on days of sacrifice, that an amount of incense burning was probably a much-welcomed alternative not only to the regular worshippers and tourists in the court of the gentiles, but to the Levitical priests themselves too. Except for the sin offerings, and the “holocausts” which were entirely to be consumed by flames, all sacrifices which were burnt on the altar were mixed with incense. Time and time again, these offerings are described in the Levitical texts of the Bible as being “a pleasing odour unto the Lord.” In the understanding of the Jews, God also has a sense of smell. The sacrifice is one thing, an animal offered in atonement; but the incense adds to this duty the honour of worship – and it is pleasing to the Lord God. When he first revealed himself to Moses, he dwelt in a cloud of glory in the Holy of Holies. The incense too, being clouds of smoke, seemed to bring him close to the worshipers, while being an offering in itself pleasing to God.
But there is always a deeper meaning to grasp. So, in we go.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers…. All the brothers are named in alphabetical order, after some biblical character: Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon. “Frank?” asks Milly, “is that a name in the Bible?” “It sure is,” comes the reply: his full name is Frankincense!”
Frankincense, as the Christmas story of the Magi brings home to us, is the precious and honourable commodity, naturally mined and then carefully prepared, which symbolises the honour shown to God, the honour due to God, and therefore the honour of God himself.
In over a hundred and sixty references to incense and frankincense in the Sacred Scriptures, most refer to the sacrifices demanded of Israel by God for the Temple worship, and a good number refer to its idolatrous use too. The whole impression with the Temple use of incense is one of gorgeous smells. The altar of incense was to be of Acacia wood. The incense was to be “blended as by the perfumer” – and as to the blend, the Lord said to Moses in Exodus chapter 30: “Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy; and you shall beat some of it very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you; it shall be for you most holy. And the incense which you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves; it shall be for you holy to the LORD. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.” In this passage, it is the Lord Himself who makes the “recipe” for the incense to be offered to him… and it is not to be put to secular use. The secular, or pagan, uses of incense were well-known to the people of Israel. After all, many of the references to incense in the Bible refer to those who sinned through idolatry, by offering incense to foreign gods, demons, or idols. But the text of the recipe also tells us another reality – the incense had to be bought, in most cases, from outside Israel. After all, the Jews traded with the East and Far East in order to get all of these spices and gums. The very inclusion in the worship of God, then, of products not made in Israel, was symbolic of the Nations – the Gentiles – all coming together to be a part of the Temple worship, at least in figure; when the Church sings of the fulfilment of this prophecy in Christ and his Church, particularly as seen in the Epiphany and the adoration of the Magi, she quotes the prophecy: “Kings from Seba, and all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.” The prophet Jeremiah is given a sense of this reality too, when through his mouth God laments the insincerity of the sacrifices offered by Israel formerly in the Temple, when the exiles are told: “To what purpose does frankincense come to me from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”
These two tropes are, I suspect, familiar to us; on the one hand, God demands sacrifices of animals, bread, grain and incense from his Chosen People. But on the other hand, he says “do you think that I delight in the smell of the blood of bulls and oxen?” “What I want is love, not sacrifice, knowledge of God, not burnt offerings.” One definitely gets the sense, especially in the post-exilic prophets, that the Lord is so fed up with his people offering incense to Ba’al and other idols, and erecting so-called “High Places” – originally for his own worship, but gradually put to pagan, idolatrous, use – that he would rather do away with material sacrifices altogether! What he wants is the people’s fidelity, and their hearts! If only the sacrifices they offered were symbolic of that! In their desolation, the people exiled from the Temple lament the lack of religion among them, as in the prayer of Azariah: “For we, O Lord, have become fewer than any nation, and are brought low this day in all the world because of our sins. And at this time there is no prince, or prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, no place to make an offering before thee or to find mercy. Yet with a contrite heart and a humble spirit may we be accepted, as though it were with burnt offerings of rams and bulls, and with tens of thousands of fat lambs; such may our sacrifice be in thy sight this day, and may we wholly follow thee, for there will be no shame for those who trust in thee.”
These words, echoed in the traditional texts of the Mass in prayers whispered humbly by the priest at the offertory, show a firm purpose of amendment, and the desire to turn away from idolatry and turn back to the worship of the True God, with contrite hearts. The same trope appears in the Miserere psalm which promises contrition, and then the return of Temple sacrifices. The fact that these sentiments are included in the Mass should make us proud. For truly that prayer is fulfilled in the Mass. The Mass is the restoration of True Worship and Right Religion. Consider also the hopeful prophecy in the book of Malachi, foretelling a time when all nations shall join in the true worship of God with incense – a prophecy we see as being fulfilled in the Catholic Church founded by Christ: “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.”
Well might we echo that prayer of the psalmist, then, in the prayers used with incense at the Mass: “may my prayer arise before thee like incense,” and “may this incense, blessed by thee, O Lord, ascend unto thee, and may thy mercy descend upon us.”
The mingling of incense with the sacrifices of the Old Covenant is therefore fulfilled in the Mass, where incense is offered alongside the Bread and Wine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It is also evident in the parallel which the liturgy makes between the wounds of Christ, and the grains of incense – at the consecration of an Altar, for example, great lumps of frankincense gums are burnt on the four corners and centre of the Altar, representing the five wounds of Christ. Equally, in the Paschal Candle, the five wounds are represented by the five incense grains – often enclosed in great golden pins – that are placed into the candle in cruciform. The message is that it is Christ’s Sacrifice that is the essential and only one pleasing to God, offered “unto the odour of sweetness,” and the fact that incense is an element to be burned indicates that this sacrifice of His was total offering, complete gift, a holocaust in which the victim was at one and the same time the Scape-Goat offering of Yom Kippur, the atonement, and the Lamb without spot or stain offered and then consumed at Passover. Incense really is, then, integral to the Mass… after reflections such as this, we would almost wish that no Mass would ever be without it. For unlike Aaron and his descendant priests, today’s Levites offer the sacrifice of the New and Everlasting Covenant, the offering of the Body and Blood of our Blessed Saviour; mixed with the offering of that Flesh given for the life of the world, the Lamb of God is received in Holy Communion only once the incense, symbolising the purity of the offering and the honour due to God for such a memorial, has been burnt. As the Lamb is slain, incense is also offered. In the Holy of Holies, bowls of incense were to be placed before the Show-Bread of the presence. In our sanctuary, Christ the Bread of Life, the Passover Unleavened Bread of sincerity and truth, has been sacrificed, and those bowls of incense are therefore burnt before him.
This afternoon we will look further at the priestly, and angelic, use of incense, and consider a little further how this symbol of burnt offering and prayer can tell us more about our worship of God in Christ.
As we turn back to sweet-smelling things, our sense of smell, and the liturgical use of incense, let us imitate the maidens in the Song of Songs, and first run to Our Blessed Lady, and ask for her intercession. In the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary which we have sung today, many of the biblical texts referring to sweet-smelling produce are used as tropes for Mary’s purity, her Immaculate Conception, and her holiness. She is like Wisdom, who proclaims in the Scriptures: “Like cassia and camel's thorn I gave forth the aroma of spices, and like choice myrrh I spread a pleasant odour, like galbanum, onycha, and stacte, and like the fragrance of frankincense in the tabernacle.” Mary is seen typologically in the Bride of the Song of Songs: “A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all chief spices -- a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.” And we sing to her, as if to the Bride of the Song of Songs, “your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is oil poured out; therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you, let us make haste.” – “In odorem unguentorum tuorum currimus… In the perfume of thy sweet oils we run after thee.”
Hail Mary…
Well, let us turn back to incense, and to thuribles, or censers. We shall see that this is a priestly office, and an angelic one.
Like Mary, the Church is commanded to spread forth a sweet fragrance, a clear metaphor for the spreading and living of holiness, purity, and charity. Paul tells the Ephesians that such was the sacrifice of Christ, and so we should imitate him: “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” In Paul’s letter to Philemon, the church sent him gifts, a present – it is thought – of incense; but the implication is that the people were themselves a gift, by the fruits of what Paul had already planted in them, since they were to be “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.” The allusion is clear – the fragrant offerings of the Old Covenant – the incense offered to God – is to be the model of our worship now. Not only are we to spread around, like a fragrance, our good works and our charity, but, as St Paul says in a strange verse of his Second Letter to the Corinthians, we must BE that fragrance: “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” Perhaps another image of smell is required to bring this home to us; and that is the precious nard of St Mary Magdalen, broken over Our Lord’s head and poured out over his feet, with tears of penitence, as an act of homage anticipating Jesus’ burial, and as a sacrificial “spending” – one which Judas objected to on grounds of material expense – which showed how much she loved Christ, who proclaims: “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.” St John says that once the perfume jar had been broken and our Lord’s feet anointed with the nard, “the house was filled with fragrance.” House – which is the same word in Hebrew as Temple – surely signifies, for us, the Church. Our penitence, like Magdalen’s, causes a fragrance of sweet perfume to spread throughout the Church. In summary, we are called to be a sweet-smelling offering to God, both in the Church, and in the wider world. Our charity and our penitence must be perceptible to the senses of others. Sin, therefore, is to be seen as an unwelcome stench, while grace is as attractive as a perfume. As the book of Ecclesiastes warns us, “Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off an evil odour; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour.” Yet, the prophecy of the Song of Songs is as true of Mary as it is of the Church, and must be of us: “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.”
Magdalen’s fragrant offering is very much a parallel of the offerings of the Old Testament. In her case, the house was filled with fragrance. In the case of the Lord appearing in the Temple, in the prophet Isaiah, to place a burning charcoal on the lips of the prophet, the house was filled with smoke. Both of these, then, are fulfilled in the Holy Mass, when we use incense for the worship of God: a sweet odour fills the temple, a smoke fills the sanctuary of the Lord, and an offering is made, something is spent – in our case, not the blood of bulls, but the Blood of Christ; not expensive perfume, but the love of Jesus and our acts of charity joined to his; not merely an incense of practical use, masking the unwelcome smells, but an incense of worship, unmasking for us the reality of our prayers.
A funny story (almost certainly apocryphal) is told of a prominent Protestant (think the Ian Paisley of his time) being presented visiting Pope Leo XIII. At the end of the audience, the Pope deigned to give him a blessing, saying “Ab illo benedicaris in cuius honorem cremaberis” - “May you be blessed by Him in whose honour you shall be burnt.”
Serious point: The priest offers the incense at Mass as an offering on our behalf. He talks to it, as he puts it on the hot charcoal: “May you be blessed by Him in whose honour you shall be burnt.”
In the Old Testament, only those tasked with offering incense on behalf of the people were allowed to do so. Undoubtedly this is why the use of incense is reserved, in the Church, for the ordained ministers. Yes, a server acts as thurifer, but he only uses incense blessed by a priest, and only really exercises this function in a quasi-priestly role. Nuns, for example, do not use incense in the absence of a priest. Neither are there occasions when the laity use it on their own.
It was to the Levites, and the sons of Aaron the priest, that God through Moses gave the task of offering incense. In the book of Numbers, we read how Korah rose up against Moses, claiming that all the congregation were holy enough for this task, not just those whom Moses had appointed… and two hundred and fifty men came with thuribles to offer incense, indignant that they were worthy… but the Lord destroyed them, and the ground swallowed them up! The censers, however, were kept as holy, and melted down for plate to be used in the Temple – but the message was clear. Some were priests, and some were not. Some were able to offer incense to God, and some were not. In fact, even two sons of Aaron lost their lives for not having followed the instructions to worship correctly! We read in Leviticus: “Now Nadab and Abi'hu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer, and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered unholy fire before the LORD, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came forth from the presence of the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD has said, `I will show myself holy among those who are near me, and before all the people I will be glorified.'” It is to Aaron’s other sons that the priesthood was eventually transmitted. First Book of Chronicles: “Aaron was set apart to consecrate the most holy things, that he and his sons for ever should burn incense before the LORD, and minister to him and pronounce blessings in his name for ever.”
The incense is still blessed by the priest. With one exception – and that is when the Sacrament is exposed, such as at Benediction. No blessings are given by the priest when he stands in the Eucharistic Presence.
We are familiar, I think, with the priest Zechariah, the father of our Order’s patron St John the Baptist. We read in St Luke’s Gospel: “according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechari'ah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechari'ah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.” The angel, as we know, reveals himself to be Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God. In a few verses’ time, the same Archangel goes to Mary at her Annunciation. But with Zechariah, as we know, there is a punishment for his not having trusted the Lord sufficiently. The text says “And the people were waiting for Zechari'ah, and they wondered at his delay in the temple. And when he came out, he could not speak to them, and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple; and he made signs to them and remained dumb. And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.” The rest of the story, we know. Suffice it to call to mind here the office of the priest to offer incense in the Temple, and to note that the angel appeared “on the right side of the altar of incense.”
This phrase is taken up at the longer blessing of incense at the Offertory of the Mass, but in fact refers specifically to another Archangel, Michael. The image is that, at God’s Altar in heaven, Michael stands as defender of God’s people, and here, at the right side of our Altar, the priest blesses incense by his intercession, asking that the Lord bless it and accept it as a fragrant offering, unto the odour of sweetness. We can think also of that passage in the Book of Revelation, describing the liturgy of heaven: “Another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.” Thinking again of St Thomas’ view on our glorified bodies in heaven, and their heightened sense of smell, I’m rather looking forward to the heavenly liturgy, since there will be incense there! It will, surely, be much better than that confected here below and sold to us in bulk by Charles Farris or Hayes and Finch.
These two ideas – priestly offering of incense here below, and angelic offering of incense in heaven above, surely come together in the Holy Mass, where the symbolic use of incense as our prayers, and the burning of an offering to God, are joined together. The thurifer, now, can be seen as an angelic role, complementary to that of the priest – who, in the person of Christ, offers the perfect sacrifice to God, ministered to by angels as Christ was in his Passion. Even in the middle of the Canon of the Mass, the priest asks for an angel to help him: “In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty...”
I hope and pray that the smell of incense, so evocative to our memory whenever we enter a Catholic church, will remind us of these things. If the offering of incense is a priestly and angelic role, then our use of it in the liturgy is a mirror of the liturgy of Heaven, where Christ our crucified and risen Saviour pleads for us at the Right Hand of the Father, offering true worship to him, and joined to Christ are we, the Church, whose incense is symbolic of our prayers in adoration of the one true God, through Christ. No more will we offer incense to idols or worship foreign gods – we will be faithful, as the people of Israel were called to be, in offering – and becoming ourselves – a pleasing sacrifice to God, the aroma of Christ, and a sweet-smelling offering. The practical and visual aspects of incense – the smoke and the smell, are certainly symbolic of God’s glory, of our prayers ascending and his grace descending, and remind us of what is happening at Mass and of Him who is present for us always in the Tabernacle. But the smell will also remind us of our senses, and of the “odour of sanctity” that we are called to embody in the holiness and charity of our lives. Equally, we pray that our senses may always remain open to the perception of heavenly realities while we are still in the world. Perhaps we will see the virtue of others, henceforth, as being more attractive to us, and more precious, even than Chanel No. 5.
To return to the world… as we must, for a while… we know that smells are important here below. But we also see how pagan religions still offer incense, just as they always have. I note also the esoteric use of josticks, and the burning of incense by Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs. In the Church, by contrast, incense is restored to the worship of the One True God. Equally, we must not forget what it cost the early Christians to ensure that this was the case. We know that early Church copied the Temple rituals in their liturgy – which is why we retain so much of it. They saw themselves, and we do too, as the New Israel, the fulfilment of the prophecy that a pure sacrifice would always and everywhere be offered to God. But to the Romans, for example, the Christians’ refusal to offer incense to the Roman deities was unacceptable. Whether under Nero, or Diocletian, or any of the other persecutors of the early Church, the Roman authorities suspected that if their legions lost a battle, it was because the Christians had refused to join in their incense-offering to idols. Consequently, huge persecutions of Christians ensued. Just think… if you were an early Christian in the Roman Empire, and you had been to Mass, and the priest had taken a mixture, probably imported by merchants from the East, of frankincense and gums, certainly paid for by the modest contributions of your clandestine congregation consisting of both slaves and free-men, and you had seen it burned in a thurible to honour God the Blessed Trinity, how would you feel to be forced to offer the same incense grains – just once – before an idol, say, of Jupiter, in order to save your life or your family’s lives? I pray that we might all resist as the martyrs did… but how easy it would have been to spare our earthly lives, but at the huge cost of mortal sin, a blasphemous idolatry. Thankfully, there are many martyrs of that period whose bravery inspires us still. Take, for example, some martyrs who are commemorated by the Church on Christmas Day, and whose witness is recalled in the Roman Martyrology for the 25th day of December:
“At Nicomedia, the commemoration of many thousand martyrs, who had assembled for divine service on our Lord's Nativity, when the emperor Diocletian, ordering the doors of the Church to be closed, and fire to be kindled here and there, as also a vessel with incense to be put before the entrance, and a man to cry out that those who wished to escape from the conflagration should come out and burn incense to Jupiter, all with one voice answered that they preferred to die for Christ. They were consumed in the fire, and thus merited to be born in Heaven on the day on which Christ vouchsafed to be born on Earth for the salvation of the world.”
Not only did these faithful martyrs of Nicomedia prefer to die rather than to deny Christ, they themselves became the burnt offering.
Brothers and sisters – the martyrs of Nicomedia were as you and I must be – far more pleasing to God even than the gums of the orient and costly frankincense – an offering of infinite value in God’s eyes. My last point is this – when we see the candles lit on the Altar, and the incense spooned onto burning coals, we must say “amen” in our souls to this stupendous task --- you and I are called to BE LIKE that incense, and that candle – burnt and spent entirely in the worship of God. While we live, our prayers must arise like incense, and the sweet fragrance of our Christian lives must extend throughout the church and the world like scent does around a room. It’s time, in that colloquialism, to “wake up and smell the coffee.” In our life as in our death, we are also called to make of ourselves a perfect, total, unconditional and beautiful offering to God – the offering pleasing in his sight. For we are his incense; in Christ, we are offered to the Father as the sacrifice that saves the world; we are an offering pleasing to his name; we will not give in to the temptations of the evil one, nor the desires of wicked men, to dissuade us from the worship of God and self-offering which we have committed ourselves to undertake. Rather than ever disown him, or give worship to anything less than him, we will offer our very selves to him. As St Paul exhorts us in the letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
So, dearly beloved, you ARE incense; you will be offered, you are called to be an offering. And since none of us instantly relishes the idea of being pulverised and burnt, even metaphorically, understand the blessing, too, as metaphorically applying to you: “Benedicaris in cuius honore cremaberis…” may He, in whose honour your lives are offered, bless you now. Place yourself in the thurible as confidently as you place yourself on the paten and in the chalice – for our lives are offered to the worship of one who alone will find us to be a pleasing sacrifice, a fragrant offering, and the sweet aroma of Christ. When we offer ourselves in this way, “The Temple is filled with smoke,” “The House is filled with fragrance.”