Posted on 07/21/2004 7:51:24 PM PDT by NYer
Lover of the penitent
Show your mercy in our day.
This pure incense, Lord, accept,
that these priestly hands now raise,
as gifts by the faithful of your Church
to atone and praise.
And as you received the ram
sacrificed by Abraham,
And from Aaron's hands
Sweet perfume from distant lands.
Lord, receive this incense, which, we pray may win,
mercy and release from sin.
Maronite Incense Qolo
We used to spike it with pot when I was a kid. That was always fun.
FWIW Psalm 141:2 "Let my prayer rise before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice" is a fixed piece of Lutheran Evening Prayer (Vespers) 365 days a year with the use of incense during this Canticle strongly encouraged.
Really?
Thanks for posting this thread.
Boy, I sure do miss incense at church...nowadays it is a very rare sight indeed.
Regards,
Excellent. Thanks!
Try an Orthodox church. You will be pleasantly surprized.
This was many years ago, when we were just married. He had been raised Methodist although his mom is Catholic (she married a Methodist minister's son), but there was a Very High Anglican church just around the corner from our little apartment in Virginia Highlands, and I persuaded him to walk over for Easter.
He was already in shock from his encounter with the holy water font and the Lady Chapel . . . then the processional hymn started, and here came the thurifer amid clouds of smoke. As an additional wrinkle the thurifer/altar server was blind and was being led by another altar server with one hand on his shoulder, the other swinging this large smoking thurible . . . the congregation sort of flinched on every swing.
I was surprised that my husband ever darkened the door of an Episcopal church again . . . and now here he is Catholic.
Our church uses incense on high holy days - especially during the Easter Triduum, you can't see across the sanctuary.
My Anglo-Catholic parish uses incense during Holy Week and the other usual notable Sundays, and we've got one altar server who fires it up whenever he serves because, frankly, he likes it. Swings that thurifer around, too. The choir keeps egging him on to try a 360 when he incenses the congregation, but he hasn't gone for it yet. When Charlie gets the incense going, we in the choir are thankful that the new windows (that open a lot easier and wider than the old ones) were put in behind us.
Our priest sings this at every service during Lent as well. It is so beautiful.
The thing I never got used to in our old church was the Asperges at the Easter Vigil. I stood on the front left of the choir, behind the altar, and we would be singing the "Vidi Aquam" (I told you it was a High church) which is fairly difficult chant (especially when our choirmaster has the men and women singing different parts in some spots and unison in others) when all of a sudden I would get a face full of water because I was on the front row. My copy of the "Vidi Aquam" actually has water spots all over it, I got nailed every year with what seemed like quarts of holy water.
In our new church, the choir sings from the choir loft/gallery at the rear of the church, so we don't get any holy water at all . . . .<< sniff >> For the Easter Triduum we are downstairs, because we lead the procession of the Blessed Sacrament from the Tabernacle to the Chapel of Repose . . . right in front of the thurifer . . . so we get well and truly censed.
My wife was raised Roman Catholic and she told me she used to wonder why all Roman Catholic Churches smelled the same. For a while, she wondered if they all used the same wood cleaner for the pews or some such thing.
Then I got a small supply of pure frankincense from an Orthodox supply house and she realized that was what she had been smelling all along.
Go figure.
We only occasionally use incense at our Masses. Grew up in an old-fashioned Latin Mass RCC which was almost a cathedral! Loved the smell of incense, always have and always will.
What a sight that must be!
I once did a word study of the word, "aroma". It was amazing how often it appeared in the Bible.
"They shall be as a burnt offering to the LORD, with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the LORD." Lev 23:18
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