Does incense rise during the prayers in your worship service?

Discussion in 'Liturgy, and Book of Common Prayer' started by Fr. Bill, Jul 20, 2014.

  1. Fr. Bill

    Fr. Bill Member

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    A question concerning a particular use of incense during a worship service …

    Our Sunday worship is Morning Prayer and Holy Eucharist. The latter order of service commences with the Offertory. After the homily comes the Creed, then the Prayers of the People, then the Offertory and so on through the Eucharist.

    During the prayers, incense is burning in a table censer on the altar during the prayers. The coal for this censer is ignited by me as the congregation is singing the last verses of the gospel hymn. I'm in the pulpit before this hymn is complete, and by the end of the homily (around 30 minutes), the coal is fully lit. After the creed, a Lay Reader (who conducts the Morning Prayer part of our service) places incense on the coal, and the smoke rises from the altar as the prayers are offered. I cover the coal with the sand in the table censer and then pass it to the acolyte to set aside in the chancel, all part of the preparations for the Eucharist while the offering is collected.

    This feature of our service -- the incense burning on the altar -- was approved by my bishop, who tells me it was common for the monastics in the Western Church to do this during the various canonical hours of prayer, though he is uncertain about the custom in parish or cathedral worship.

    The rationale for this practice is the pattern and precedent found in the Old Testament, where the altar of incense was used at the morning and evening sacrifice. We see this as well in the NT account of Zacharias who was offering incense when the angel informed him he would sire John the Baptist (Luke 1:10 -- And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense.) Finally, the scenes John see in heaven show the angels offering great bowls of incense along with the prayers of the saints. In general, “to offer incense” is throughout scripture a synonym for worship or prayer or both.

    Now, on the notion that God has always been pleased (and, from John's visions of heaven, we know He is still pleased) to have incense offered along with worship and prayer, we in our parish routinely offer incense during our Lord's Day worship during the prayers.

    Question: do you recall this practice in any other place of late? Does your own parish use incense in this way? Does your parish use incense in worship at all? Why, or why not?




     
  2. zimkhitha

    zimkhitha Active Member

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    Incense in our province is standard during Communion. I notice some suburban parishes are starting to drop it and use it for special services like Easter, Ash wednesday, feasts etc. The use of incense is on the majority though.