Incense
Twice each day, a priest entered the sanctuary of the Jerusalem Temple, the space surrounding the “Holy of Holies,” and showered it with incense smoke. While he did this, the ordinary people prayed on the other side of the walls. These were called Tamid services ― “the hours of incense.”
It is with a Tamid service that Luke’s Gospel opens. He tells the story of Zechariah. Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist. He was also a priest of the Temple. “According to the custom of the priesthood,” Luke wrote, “it fell to [Zechariah] by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside” (Lk 1:9-10).
When Zechariah had filled the sanctuary with smoke, and all the people were outside praying, the text tells us that “there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense” (Lk 1:11). Gabriel, the same angel who would announce Jesus’s birth to Mary, then told Zechariah that his wife, who was “advanced in years,” would give birth to John the Baptist.
Incense does not cause God to show up, neither at Mass nor in the Temple. It does not cause the angels to show up. God always shows up. The angels always show up. Incense encourages us to show up. We are present at Mass, but we’re also faraway. Even when we’re attentive, the Mass’s other-worldliness is often swallowed up by all the ordinary. Incense changes our psychology. It brings us “up to heaven” rather than “down to earth.” It disposes us to recognize that something different, something extraordinary, is happening. It prepares us to meet and encounter God, even to consume him.
In the Book of Revelation ― the Bible’s final book ― an angel is seen holding a golden censer. The text says that, rising from the censer is both “the smoke of the incense… with the prayers of the saints” (Rev 8:4). That is precisely what happened with Zechariah. The people prayed alongside him outside the Temple walls. The incense and their prayers mingled together and rose to heaven. That is also what happens at Mass. The incense mixes with us. It invites us to and prepares us for an encounter with the divine, to be carried off to heaven.
At Mass, we are changed. When we meet with God, we are changed. In this encounter, we ourselves are invited to take on not so much the smell of incense, but something of ― to use Saint Paul’s words ― “the aroma of Christ” (2 Cor 2:15). Incense not only disposes us to meet God or to hear his words, as Zechariah did so vividly. Incense is also meant to call to mind that “aroma of Christ.” Incense reminds us that our life and our prayers can be drawn into the aroma of Jesus's life and Jesus’s prayers. It disposes us to receive Christ’s fragrance. It invites us to make his fragrance our own.