Holy Smoke!
The air was clear when we went into the theater Thursday for the matinee—Minions and Monsters—but on exiting, ‘‘Holy Smoke!” actually, unholy smoke, from the Canadian wildfires.
I’ve been a house cat since.
Being housebound has given me time to sort through a few neglected boxes. In one I came across a draft of a piece I wrote eleven years ago for Gathered Fragments, the Journal of the Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania—a brief bio of an old priest-friend, Fr. Richard Wersing, who passed away at age 96 in 2006.
In reading my draft I was reminded of a story he told—of holy smoke: incense.1
Fr. Richard was a US Army chaplain, served on active duty during both WWII and Korea, and as a reservist during Vietnam. Both his dedication to liturgy and his boundless creativity are evident in a 1951 diary entry while assigned to the Third Infantry Division in Korea.
It was glorious weather for a glorious day, so, after a rough day of training, we had Mass yesterday for Corpus Christi at 6:00 p.m. in the outdoor hillside chapel at 3rd Bn.
At 6:30 we had Benediction for our first time here. Our charcoal was burnt wood from a Korean home; the incense was real and it was placed in a Japanese brass ashtray and ladled out with a large brass Korean kinchi spoon.
The censer was a Korean rice bowl of brass.
I punched three holes in it and strung it with three dog tag chains - my own and my two assistants’.
The censer held a glowing fire producing billows of incense quite in keeping with the prayers of the men. I know their prayers were rising as surely as the fragrant incense cloud-odors.
The monstrance was my tiny G.I. ciborium. I placed a large Host inside the opened lid, covered It with cellophane and tacked that back with scotch tape.
There was no humeral veil.
The Protestant chaplain’s organist played the hymns on the little field organ and all the men sang beautifully!
Immediately afterwards, we hurried along the road for a brisk half-hour and arrived at 2nd Bn. for another Benediction at 7:30. Here wind blew out most of the candles, we had no organist and one chain pulled though our make-shift censer. We put the censer together with our telephone wire and proceeded to have a beautiful a capello Benediction.
Truly, holy smoke, and holy man—Fr. Richard’s mortal remains are interred in Arlington. May he rest in peace.
One of my favorite dictionaries is the 1954 Maryknoll Catholic Dictionary, which tells us, in part, that incense “burned over charcoal in a thurible is used at High Mass, Benediction, and other ceremonies. It symbolizes sacrifice for God, and prayer and good works ascending to God.”