Candles
In the ancient world, civil officials were sometimes honored and led with torches when appearing publicly. In the seventh-century, Christians began to honor popes and bishops this way as they processed into their churches. They laid the torches to burn in front of the altar. The symbol, of course, came to rest upon the true dignitary at Mass ― not the pope or bishop, but Jesus. And so even today candles are at the altar, the place Jesus becomes present. Sometimes candles are held beside the book of the Gospels when Jesus’s words are proclaimed. Jesus is the true dignitary. The candles confess that he is present. He is present at the altar. He is present in his words.1
For a time, altar candles needed to be of pure beeswax. Even today, with that requirement lifted,2 at the Easter Vigil, the deacon will ask God to accept the gigantic Easter candle, “a solemn offering, the work of bees.” Bees have always been important to Christians. Rome, the city of the popes, is covered in tiny sculpted bees. “The bee is more honored than the other animals,” Saint John Chrysostom said, “not because she labors, but because she labors for others.”3 The bee produces honey. It produces a wax purer than the animal fat alternatives. It burns cleaner.
But beeswax was also chosen because the honeybee called to mind Mary. Honeybee hives, like Mary, are mysterious blends of virginity and motherhood. Indeed, the vast majority of bees are “virgins.” Worker bees ― those that make the wax in candles ― do not reproduce. It is only the queen who is a mother, mating with a few “drone bees.” The working hive is thus “virgin.” But the hive is also, like Mary, mother and queen.4
If you follow the parallel, the wax product of the hive ― the “fruit” of the virgin-mother bees ― must be something extraordinary. It must be something like Jesus. Indeed, medieval Christians saw in their beeswax candles a symbol of Jesus himself. The wax was the human flesh, received from a virgin hive. The wick was his human soul, sacrificed and burning down. It was mortality. The fire was his divinity, illuminating the world.5 “I am,” Jesus said, “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12).
Torches and candles are fitting symbols. They do far more than light up the room. Indeed, fire has been an elemental image of God’s presence. When God appeared to Moses, it was in a burning bush, “in a flame of fire” (Ex 3:2). When the same Moses led the Israelites through the desert, “the Lord went before them… in a pillar of fire” (Ex 13:21). Fire marks God’s presence. God’s love is a fire. “I came to cast fire upon the earth,” Jesus said, to reveal God’s presence, to share the fire of God’s love. “Would that it were already burning” (Luke 12:49).
B.I. Mullahy, New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 2nd ed. (2003), s.v. “Light, Liturgical Use of,” 580-582.
One sometimes hears that, even today, altar candles need to be “51% beeswax.” This is not correct. See the April 2018 Newsletter of the Committee on Divine Worship from the USCCB, “Composition of Candles for Use in the Liturgy.” Also see the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, §117 and 307.
Saint John Chrysostom, “Homily 12,” On the Statues, §5.
See Bee Wilson, The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us (New York: St. Martin’s, 2004), 83.
See Hilda M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee: in Ancient Times and Folklore (Mineola, NY: 2004), 134.