It is true that we must worship God in spirit and truth. But man is both body and soul. If he worships God through his soul, this must also be reflected in his body, because humans expresses spiritual realities in terms of physical metaphors. If you love a girl, “I love you” is not enough: you must give her a rose. If you ask for forgiveness, you do not only say “I am sorry”: you must kneel before her, and shed a tear of sincerity. In the same way, when a Catholic priest offers prayer to God in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, this is what he do (in parenthesis) and what he says: (At solemn masses, the Priest now blesses incense saying the following prayers:) May the Lord, by the intercession of the blessed Michael, the Archangel, who standeth at the right side of the altar of incense, and of all His Elect, vouchsave to bless this incense and receive it as an odour of sweetness: through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Receiving the thurible from the Deacon, the Priest incenses the bread and the wine, while he says:) May this incense, which Thou has blesssed, O Lord, ascend to Thee, and may Thy mercy descend upon us. (Then he incenses the Altar, saying:) Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed as incense in Thy sight: the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. Clyde, compare what you have just read with the Book of Revelation: The Gold Censer. 3Another angel came and stood at the altar,* holding a gold censer. He was given a great quantity of incense to offer, along with the prayers of all the holy ones, on the gold altar that was before the throne.c 4The smoke of the incense along with the prayers of the holy ones went up before God from the hand of the angel. The angel offers incense + prayers of all the holy ones. “Incense” is distinct from the “prayers of all the holy ones”, because of the comma (,) and the phrase “along with”. As I said before, Catholic worship is only patterned from heavenly worship.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:28:47 +0000
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