Holy smells

Funny, I was brought up Catholic (i.e., Polish National Catholic, sort of the Polish equivalent of the Episcopal Church, Catholic without a pope), and I was an altar boy. There was a definite 'smell' in the church, in its furnishings, in the liturgical robes we put on, in the sacramental objects we handled, that we identified as 'holy' and could be smelled nowhere else. That smell, and the pre-dawn chill and candle-lit darkness of early masses I used to assist at before starting my school day are what remain of my childhood experience of 'church' and even of Christianity. They say it never leaves you. Oh, and one other thing, the background sense of dread, lest I make a mistake in the service: ring the bells too early, too late, or not at all, trip on my too-lengthy cassock when transporting the heavy missal book from one side of the altar to the other, let the towel slide off onto the floor during the lavabo—all things which are the terror of young altar boys.

When my family left the Church, I prayed at home, where the smells were anything but 'holy': my mom's delicious Polish or Italian cooking, the pervasive smell of pine-sol when she was in a mood to clean everything in sight. Prayer time at my house had no smells, just images: my glow-in-the-dark Sacred Heart, my crucifix with my rosary hanging in perfect symmetry from the nailed hands of Jesus, except for the rosary, both plastic (I still have the crucifix). But no 'holy' smells met my nose again until I started attending mass with my first steady girlfriend as a shy high school student. This time it was the local Roman Catholic mission. I didn't know that there could be any other kind of church. And there, there was that smell again.
The 'holy' smell.

Finally, as a grown-up, I met Jesus Christ and gave my life into His hands. Where did I start going to church? To the Episcopal Church, because I knew enough to know 'that's what I was.' Funny, how does one just 'know' things like that? At first there wasn't really a very strong 'holy' smell, because the churches I went to didn't use incense, or not much. Later, with my wife and sons, I started worshiping at a 'high church' parish, and suddenly, there was that old smell again, even stronger and richer than I remembered. The Parish of Saint Mark in Portland, the pinnacle of high churchmanship not only in Portland but in the entire universe, 'How wondrous are Thy courts, O Lord of hosts…'

Now that I have been a Greek Orthodox Christian for twenty-three years, and have worshiped with many different kinds of Orthodox Christians, I can't say for sure, but it doesn't seem like there actually is a 'holy' smell in our temples. We definitely do have a 'holy' smell, and at every service, because there are no such things as 'low' services in the Greek Church. The fragrance of incense, of basil, of myrrh, overpowers during worship, but after the sanctuary empties, it doesn't seem to leave much smell. I realise my experience is limited, and that there may be some Orthodox churches that have a 'holy' smell permanently in them: it's just I can't remember having been to any.

Or maybe it's just that the 'holy' smell only happens during the presence of the Holy, maybe it just follows that Presence, like the perfume of a well-beloved Lover. I relate to my friends the same way, or at least I used to when I was younger. I knew my friends by their scent. I guess I am just an animal after all. And I testify that I have sometimes smelled that 'holy' smell even at times when there seemed to be nothing to produce it. The Orthodox Christian sometimes has olfactory hallucinations, unless they are visions after all, visions of the nose at it were.

C. S. Lewis writes of the 'holy' smell in his novel, Till We Have Faces, where it is called the 'Ungit smell' after the name of a pagan goddess whose sanctuary reeked of the cheap scent of the sacred prostitutes and pigeons' blood. The 'holy' smell can be different, for different forms of religion. Lucky for some of us, we were born or born again Christians, whose holy book promises and delivers not only 'holy' smells, but holy lives as well.