priests carrying smoke during service

[Minnesota]

What is the thing with the smoke that the priest waves around during a mass?

[Clanad]

A censer...

[Minnesota]

what is if for? And why?

[graemer]

It's for when incense is used in solemn masses and processions etc and dates way way back. Theres a catholic dictionary which explains it's history and how to swing it. There's a special double swing for VIPs.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03519c.htm

[Hippy]

Incence is derived from wood bark, plant material and distilled from rare earth deposits. In antiquity, millennia before the Roman Empire and its successor, the Roman Catholic Church, ages before Christ, burning incence has been used in religious ceremonies thoughout the world as an offering of something precious to the gods, and in doing so to "purify" the air. It is probable that halucogens were included in ancient recipies so as to induce transcindental states of "religious" experience.

[Hippy]

Oops, correct spelling is "incense" - oh for that Edit function!

[Octavius]

When I was an altar server (years ago) we called it a thurible (same as a censer) and a boat was used to hold the incense.  A piece of charcoal was lit so that it smouldered and then incense was spooned on to the charcoal in the thurible.  This was then wafted around.

The largest thurible is the enormous 5 feet high Botafumeiro hung from the high ceiling of Santiago Cathedral in Spain.

Apparently there are now serious health warnings for altar servers as the smoke may contain carbon molecules.

[brachiopod]

I thought it was one of those new air feshener things - you know, the one with the 'puff' and the extremely irritating advert.

[Peter Pedant]

Yeah a thurible.

and the fella that swings the thurible is a thurifer.

I always wanted to be a thurifer when I was a kid

If anyone is interested, (frank)incense is written up in Nature 1997, Dec 25, 667-8

Much more used by pagans, apparently. so Christianity reduced the demand and the incense farms in Sheba, you know where the Queen came from, went bust.

[rampart]

At some churches, a thurifer serves only on special occasions such as Pentacost, Trinity Sunday, Easter, etc.

Incense might be used up to five times during a service: as the altar party walks in, then when they arrive at the altar the priest will cense the altar, next the thurifer will walk out with the Gospel book and procession for the reading of the Gospel, at the offertory to cense the altar party and congregation, and at the elevation of the bread and wine. This is common in Catholic and Anglican churches.

The thurifer does not control the amount of incense - the priest does. The thurifer carries coals in the thurible and hands the incense to the priest. The priest puts it on the coals.

The thurifer has to know how to manage the chains and bowls of the thurible, poish the thurible manage the coals so that there will be coals ready at certain points throughout the service, and know how to swing the thurible carefully and within the confines of his/her particular church.

Here's a good link with more info:

http://www.aggiecatholic.org/liturgy/thurifer.pdf