The answer
First: Offering incense is a symbol of God’s presence among His people. When we smell it, we say in our hearts, “While the King is at His table, my spikenard sends forth its fragrance” (Song. 1:12).
Second: It signifies prayer (Ex. 30:1–8) as a sacrifice of love. In the Coptic rite, the liturgies of the Eucharist, Unction of the Sick, Baptism and funerals are closely related to this sacrifice of love.
Third: Offering of incense symbolizes the purification of the people as God said to Moses, “Get away from the midst of this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.” Moses then said to Aaron, “Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation” (Num. 16:44–47).
Fourth: The offering of incense is a way of honoring someone. In the Armenian rite in the ninth century, the priest used to carry the Eucharist to the sick, preceded by a cross and a censer.1258
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
1258 Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare and A. J. MacLean. Rituale Armenorum (United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1978): p. 114.