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| Cardinal Hayes incensing the altar at the opening Mass for the 7th National Eucharistic Congress at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, 1935 |
When the priest incenses the altar, he recites Psalm 140, 2-4:
We conclude by noting what and who are incensed: the bread and wine; the cross, relics, and altar; and the priest and everyone else, including the lay congregation. We may see in this a symbol of the unity of Christ in His Church both as offered and offering. The altar and cross are symbols of Christ, the High Priest who offers and also the Victim who is offered. The bread and wine are symbols of the Christ who is to be offered, and which are about to become more than symbols. And the ministers and the faithful, along with the Saints whose relics are present, are members of the mystical Body of Christ; they too (clergy and laity) are about to be offered, united in the sacrifice. The laity should be especially grateful for being included in this rite: besides being a sign that they are one of the oblations being offered, it is also a sign that they are one of the offerers. For in their own way and by virtue of their royal priesthood in baptism, the lay faithful are agents in the offertory: expendable agents to be sure (Mass can be said without them), but agents nonetheless. Finally, the incensation is a visual fulfillment of the priest’s prayer for mercy to descend upon us all, both in and out of the sanctuary.
Dirigátur, Dómine, oratio mea, sicut incensum in conspectu tuo: Elevatio manuum meárum sacrificium vespertínum. Pone, Dómine, custodiam ori meo, et ostium circumstantiae labiis meis: Ut non declínet cor meum in verba malitiae, ad excusandas excusatiónes in peccátis.Which the Douay Rheims translates as:
Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed as incense in Thy sight: the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door round about my lips. May my heart not incline to evil words, to make excuses in sins.The choice of Ps. 140,2a is obvious: one of the few explicit allegorical readings in the Bible of a liturgical act is the interpretation of incense as the prayers of the faithful. (see Rev. 8, 3-4) Moreover, the pairing of uplifted hands with the evening sacrifice in 104, 2b typologically points to the Crucifixion, when Christ dies with outstretched arms at 3 p.m., the time of the Levitical sacrifice of lambs. And it is that Sacrifice of the Cross that is re-presenced during this Sacrifice of the Mass.
What is less obvious is why the prayer also includes Ps 140, 3 and 4, a petition for clean words and thoughts. I consider this inclusion to be another example of the liturgical stutter. Here, at this point of the Mass, it is being prompted by an awareness of heightened numinosity. The priest is about to enter into the Sancta Sanctorum of sacrifice, and he knows it.
When the priest returns the thurible to the deacon (at a Solemn High Mass) or the thurifer (at a Missa cantata), he says:
Accendat in nobis Dóminus ignem sui amóris, et flammam aeternae caritátis. Amen.Which I and others translate as:
May the Lord kindle within us the fire of His love and the flame of everlasting charity. Amen.
The prayer adds more details to the phenomenology of liturgical incense. Before, we learned that incense is like prayer and its fragrance is like God’s approval of our prayer. Here, we envision the fire that burns the incense as God’s love and charity. We are again reminded that whatever we give to God (in this case, our prayers) He has already given to us (the ability and inspiration to pray). Further, if the thurible is what holds the fire, we may conclude that the thurible represents the human heart, where love resides. Hence the prayer by St. Augustine: “Let the hymn of praise and the weeping rise up together in Your sight from Your censers which are the hearts of my brethren” (Conf. 10.4.5).
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| Cardinal Hayes, again |
But perhaps the most curious feature of this prayer is that it is included at all. When the Accendat first appeared in Mass ordines in the eleventh century, it was uttered by each individual who was incensed. (This practice might not be a bad idea as a private devotion today.) The location of the prayer in the 1570 Missal, on the other hand, gives it a somewhat different purpose and even a different “feel.” Originally, the Accendat functioned as a sort of elaborate “Amen” by a person has just been incensed. By repeating the words of the prayer, he acknowledges that incensation is a blessing and he petitions that this exterior action have an interior effect upon his soul. There is a certain logic and fittingness to this arrangement.
In the Tridentine Missal, on the other hand, the Accendat appears almost unexpectedly and out of the blue. When the priest blesses the deacon before the Gospel, it is in response to the deacon’s petition and an important component in preparing for the Gospel’s proclamation. But here, the priest addresses the deacon with this prayer unprovokedly after the priest has finished the most elaborate incensation of the Mass with the help of the deacon. The unexpectedness of the address gives it a spontaneous feel, as when a hero has accomplished a difficult task and then offhandedly says something to his subordinate that ends up being profound or revelatory. The prayer in this context also suggests a closeness between the priest and the deacon, who together have been collaborating in the important work of the offertory.
