There’s more to the smoke than meets the eye
By Armando Torres-García
Were it not for the thurible swinging left to right above his feet, everything the boy donned last Sunday would have been pointed toward the altar: his attentive gaze, the straight shoulders, even his neon-pink sneakers.
“Calmez-vouz,” yelled an older brother to a fidgety sibling as the boy, a priest, and the remaining entourage of altar servers passed their pew.
But the boy was unfazed, even as the smell of incense rose from the smoky pendulum and created a fog that could only be mirrored by the melting snow outside of Notre Dame Church on W. 114th and Morningside Dr.
“The incense is difficult to make,” the priest, the Rev. Louis Ardillier, said after mass. “It is something that you burn in front of a God or a king, someone of great importance. It used to be more expensive than gold.”
Often made with frankincense and sage, the incense is burned in a censer called a thurible that is suspended by a chain such as the one in the boy’s hands. Last Sunday’s concoction came from the Holy Land, a gift from one of the priests.
The smell had penetrated every corner of the marbled church by the time the boy reached the altar. As the organ music began to decrescendo, Ardillier grabbed the thurbile and surrounded the altar with smoke. Finally, he swung it above the Bible before he prayed “le Notre Père”, the Lord’s prayer. A server opened a small latch on the side of the censer and snuffed out the ashes with a small dish. The parishioners bowed their heads in silence.
“The smoke represents the intentions and the prayers of the people going up to heaven,” said Msgr. John Paddack. “There’s no magic to it.”
But to the French-speaking Catholics that gathered for mass on Sunday, the interpretations of the ritual are as diverse as their ethnic backgrounds.
“To me it represents a headache,” said Corine Downs, who moved to the United States from Madagascar in 2001. “I’ve smelled it since I was born, but you don’t notice it until you’re an adult.”
She wasn’t alone. Some of the people that were closest to the altar broke out into a harmony of their own. A college-aged girl cleared her throat, a man in jean overalls and paint-spattered boots coughed and wiped his tearing eyes. The incense boasts an aroma of pungent herbs, the kind that enters through the nostrils and comes to rest in the back of the throat.
Each priest has his own preference of how to use the incense. Some, like Ardillier, use it throughout the sermon, relighting it before communion over the wafers and wine. Others swing the thurible in sets of three, in honor of the Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ’s 33 years on Earth.
Francoise Cestac, a member of the parish and former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General has witnessed the ritual all over the world. “I’ve smelled it so much I don’t even think of it anymore,” she said. “But it reminds me of all the places I’ve been to. It smells like Sunday morning.”
Cestac is now the president of the Committee of French Speaking Societies and says that most of the parishioners at Notre Dame come from West Africa, but now live in New York and New Jersey. Notre Dame is where they’ve gone, the incense is a memory of where they came from.
At the conclusion of the sermon the boy in the pink sneakers lit the incense once again, but this time, left it on the altar. The priest and his servers retreated to the back of the church as the music rattled off mosaics and gold plated depictions of the Nativity. Some parishioners walked to the front door, others stayed seated. Clouds of smoke reached toward the heavens and heads bowed in prayer as the embers burned.