Saturday, 2/4/12
The first reading tells us,
“Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings.” The most ancient Middle Eastern cuneiform
story, the “Legend of Gilgamesh,” gives an explanation for those peoples offering
burnt sacrifices to heaven. According to the legend the gods neither ate nor
drank, but they loved the odor of roasted flesh; and they created humans to
send the odor of roasted beef up to them. The Israelites, while believing in
the One God, carried on with what they had been accustomed to see as the proper
way of worshipping.
We have something like it
when we swing thuribles loaded with charcoal and incense, filling our churches
with smoke. The idea behind it seems to be that it prompts us to send sweet
smelling prayers us to God. We don’t know if God likes it. People with asthma
don’t.
One time I opened the Book
of Mormon, and my eyes fell on a passage that pretended to be an ancient
prediction of the evils that would be brought into the world by Catholics. It
had some very bad things to say about our swinging thuribles. I remembered that
one day when two young Mormon missionaries asked to be shown through our
church. They were particularly interested in our thuribles, or censors. I told
those boys that sending up incensed fumes was a great aid to praying. I asked
them if they had anything similar, and they said they had not.
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