By JAMES MONTI
Most of us have had the experience at some time or other, upon opening the door of a church to visit the Blessed Sacrament, of finding ourselves struck by the heavy fragrance of incense that has lingered from an earlier funeral Mass or some other liturgical rite.
Incense has been used in sacred worship for countless centuries, but its effect is always the same. It has a way of transporting us. It communicates transcendence and speaks to our hearts of eternity. It takes us into the realm of the sacred and breathes into our souls the fragrance of Heaven.
But incense is not only pleasing to the sense of smell; it can be visually striking as well. I recall being at a Mass in a seminary chapel not long ago during which late afternoon sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows created celestial shafts of light piercing the mist of incense that hung and lingered in the chapel following the incensation of the Gospel Book.
And who of us hasn’t been moved by the sight of clouds of incense slowly ascending before the altar during Mass, or before the exposed Blessed Sacrament during the rite of benediction, or during a eucharistic procession?
Incensation speaks to the ears also. At the beginning of the Easter Vigil there comes that moment just before the Exsultet when in the silence of the darkened church the only sound to be heard is the rhythmic clatter of the swinging thurible as the deacon incenses both the text he is about to sing and the Paschal candle. And just minutes earlier, the celebrant of the vigil will have inserted five grains of incense into the side of the Paschal candle representing the “holy and glorious wounds” of Christ.
The Church’s use of incense is rooted in the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament, with the Book of Exodus prescribing a special altar erected within the Tent of Meeting (and subsequently in the Temple of Solomon) specifically devoted to the offering of incense twice daily, in the morning and again in the evening (Exodus 30:1-9). And each year on the Day of Atonement the Mercy Seat itself was incensed by the high priest (Lev. 16:12-13, 29-34).
By the fourth century AD we find incense in the Christian liturgy: The Spanish pilgrim Egeria, in her diary account of the liturgical rites of Jerusalem as they existed around the year 381, relates that at the weekly Sunday vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (when the bishop was present), there was an incensation that filled the entire church with its fragrance (Itinerarium Egeriae, chapter 24, n. 10).
In the west, the earliest reference to the liturgical use of incense appears in the seventh century Gelasian Sacramentary of Rome, which speaks of “an offering of incense upon the altar” for the rite of consecrating a new church. By the first half of the eighth century, incense was being used at Mass in the papal liturgy of Rome, as recorded in Roman Ordo 1.
The earliest extant prayers for blessing incense appear in the church consecration rite given in a ninth to tenth century pontifical of England’s Monastery of St. Germans, Cornwall. In the 11th century, we first find the Archangel St. Michael invoked in a formula for the blessing of incense during the Offertory of the Mass, the same formula that was to pass into the Missale Romanum of 1570.
St. Michael’s association with incense stemmed from the belief that he is the angel described in the Book of Revelation as offering incense before the throne of God (Rev. 8:3-5), an identification promulgated by the 12th-century liturgical commentator Rupert of Deutz (+1135 — Commentary on John, book 5, PL 169, col. 973).
The occasions for using incense grew organically over time, with incensations not only at Mass, in the Divine Office (during the Magnificat at vespers), in church consecration ceremonies and during funeral rites (the incensation of the body of the deceased), but also in the blessing of ashes on Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday, and candles on the Feast of the Purification of Our Lady (February 2 — now the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord). Several French matrimony rites of the 13th and 14th centuries specify the incensation of the bride and groom, with one text prescribing the incensation of the couple’s two wedding rings as well.
In the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, incense is no longer used for the blessings of palms, ashes, or candles, nor is it used in the Rite of Matrimony, but it is still used during the Mass and in the Divine Office as it has been for centuries, albeit in a somewhat simpler manner.
Incense plays a particularly conspicuous role in the Church’s rites of eucharistic adoration. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is preceded by a triple incensation. And for centuries, rubrics for both the eucharistic procession of Holy Thursday (to the Repository) and that of Corpus Christi have called for two thurifers to incense the Eucharist during these processions.
In late medieval and Renaissance Spain it was the custom in several cities (Toledo, 1478; Jaen, 1499; Salamanca, 1533; Cordoba, 1561; Palencia, 1567) to place inside the tabernacle of the Holy Thursday repository, where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved until Good Friday, an incense boat, a purely symbolic gesture alluding to the Passion and death of Christ. The incense in its incense boat would have represented the myrrh and aloes with which Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea buried Christ’s body (John 19: 38-40).
The use of incense is deeply laden with symbolism, most especially as an image of the offering and ascent of our prayers to God: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee” (Psalm 141:2). It echoes the ultimate oblation offered to God the Father, that of Christ offering Himself on the cross: “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2).
Building upon this biblical symbolism, the great 13th-century bishop and liturgist William Durandus (+1296) sees the thurible (the censer) as representing the heart of man, lit by the fervor of devotion, and its fuming clouds of incense as our prayers rising to God.
The vessel that holds the unspent incense, the incense boat, by its distinctive shape reminds us that we should strive by means of prayer to navigate the passage from the sea of this world to the homeland of Heaven.
An Act Of Adoration
There is a fundamental difference in the meaning of incensation according to who or what is being incensed and in what context. For on the one hand incensation can connote a supplication to God that He may bless, purify, and make holy that which is incensed (for example, palm branches, candles, etc.). Thus the incensation during the Offertory of the Mass, unique in that everyone present as well as the altar and the oblata (the unconsecrated bread and wine) upon it are censed, serves as an outward expression that everyone and everything must be purified in preparation for approaching the Holy of Holies of the Mass, the consecration, and the sacred rite of Holy Communion that follows it.
But when the Holy Eucharist is censed, the incensation constitutes an act of adoration offered to our Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament.
The highly intricate rite of incensing the altar that is carried out both at the beginning of Mass and during the Offertory in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite can be traced in its earliest form to the 11th century and had fully developed by the late 1400s. Putting such complex rubrics into reverent action requires what Pope Benedict XVI aptly called the “ars celebrandi,” the art of celebration (Sacramentum caritatis, February 22, 2007, nn. 38, 40).
Thus in giving directions for this rite, the papal Master of Ceremonies Paride de Grassis (+1528) speaks of the fitting deportment with which the celebrant should carry out the incensation:
“Although at every incensation of the altar a certain grace should be sought more than any skill, nonetheless the act of incensation shall be done fittingly and properly enough, if the celebrant should take the thurible in his right hand, standing erect, not at the side of the Epistle, but before the middle of the altar, with his hands in their distance equally outspread, as little as possible, drawing his hand near to the vessel of the thurible; for if he makes the little chain exceedingly long, thus that the very vessel of the thurible should hang excessively — especially when the chalice is on the altar — he cannot direct the thurible either easily or securely, or with grace; just the same, that when he directs it he should take heed that he not direct his entire person, nor should he improperly move his head, nor move his left [arm], but as much as possible direct his right arm only, slowly and calmly, and draw it back, thus that when he withdraws the thurible, he should withdraw it under his arm.
“It shall be more fitting also if in incensing, when he walks about before the altar going around it, and incensing, he should always move that foot ahead, which is nearer to the altar in going, and returning, making as many steps, however many swings of the thurible he makes” (De Caeremoniis Cardinalium & Episcoporum in eorum diaecesibus, Rome, 1580, fol. 47r).
The next time we see the Blessed Sacrament or the altar being incensed, let us mingle the supplications of our hearts with the rising incense, that our prayers may find favor before the throne of God.
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