Why do we use incense?
Darla, being allergic to incense, was looking for a church service without incense at Easter. She called a few places and found one a few miles away from the Catholic church she usually attended. Her daughter-in-law, Kathy, witnessed the struggle and asked why incense was used at all for the services. Darla did not know the answer. Her oldest daughter was a nun in the city and she was coming home for the Easter dinner. Darla immediately called Sr. Agnes with the question and she agreed to come prepared at the Easter dinner with some information.
The Sacramentary of the Catholic worship lays down the use of incense as optional for mass, but it adds to the solemnity of the celebration. Therefore most of the Easter celebrations use incense. The incense used for worship is powdered resin from different plants and trees, the main ingredient being frankincense. When sprinkled into the burning coal in a vessel called ‘censer,’ it becomes a fragrant cloud of smoke. It often symbolizes prayer rising up to the presence of God. The book of Revelation says, “The smoke of incense along with the prayers of the holy ones went up before God from the hand of the angel” (Rv 8:4). The rubrics for the mass suggest the use of incense as many as five times. Incense is also used at other occasions like benediction, dedication of an altar, etc. We can see five grains of unburned incense arranged like a cross on the Easter candle. A deacon precedes the celebrant to the altar with incense as mass begins, and the priest incenses the altar as he begins the celebration. The celebrant as well as the people assembled at worship, are incensed. Incense is also used over the gifts brought up to the altar. Both in the East and the West Christians use incense at their worship as a sign of purification
Frankincense is the resin produced by a family of desert trees that grow across the deserts of southern Arabia. The milky white sap of this tree that hardens to droplets of resinous gum is scraped off the tree. Because these trees were scarce and harvesting was alaborious process, frankincense was very pricy. At the time of Jesus a pound of frankincense would have cost the equivalent of $500 in today’s currency. The incense we use today is largely frankincense compounded with other less expensive aromatics.
The earliest use of incense is recorded in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Fifteen centuries before Christ, the Egyptians sent expeditions to find it in the mysterious lands of the Arabian Peninsula, especially today’s Yemen and Oman. The Hebrew people used a lot of incense for their worship in the Temple. God Himself had ordered a special altar of incense. “For burning incense you shall make an altar of acacia wood . . .” (Ex 30:1). At the time of Solomon an offering of incense twice a day has been going on for more than five hundred years. The angel of the Lord appeared to Zachariah standing at the right of the altar of incense in order to announce the birth of John the Baptist (Lk 1:11). The magi who came to Jerusalem from the East brought gold, frankincense and myrrh as offerings for child Jesus (Mt 2:1-11).
We express our worship of Almighty God in words and gestures. Burning of incense is a prayer in itself; a prayer in action. During the time of the Roman persecution of Christians they were ordered to offer incense before the image of the emperor or a pagan deity. The early Christians therefore, detested incense. It is after the persecutions that incense began to be used for Christian celebrations. The rising smoke of incense symbolized the ascent of the prayers of the faithful. Ritual incensing of objects, peoples and places was for their purification or for making the object or person holy and worthy of God.
Sr. Agnes brought in an interesting subject matter for discussion at the Easter dinner. Everyone understood the rationale for the use of incense. Dan, Darla’s husband,had visited China and he talked about the incense sticks he found all over there in the context of worship. Kathy began to wonder why the church she was going to, never used this rich symbol for worship
Fr Xavier Thelakkatt