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Questions & Answers

Flower of Incense

Faith Q&A › Metropolitan Youssef › Prayer, Fasting and Worship › Flower of Incense

The question

With regard to the second part of the Sunday Theotokia, some Churches omit everything that comes after "Lord now you are letting your servant depart in peace..." arguing that the phrase "the flower of incenses" is no where to be seen in the Bible and never existed. My question is: does the flower of incense exist? And if it doesn't, does this mean that we should recite the second half of the entire Theotokia?

The answer

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the incense (the sweet aroma). In the procession of incense, the priest censes (inaudibly) saying: 'This is He who offered Himself as an acceptable sacrifice upon the Cross for the salvation of our race. His good Father smelled Him in the evening on Golgotha. St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says, "As Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma" (Eph 5:2). St. Mary, being the Mother of God, is the flower from which this incense was taken.

Answered by His Eminence Metropolitan Youssef (opens in a new tab)

Questions answered by His Eminence Metropolitan Youssef (opens in a new tab) of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States. Question 859 on the Diocese’s Q&A site. Questions and answers © Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States. All rights reserved.