My friend and fellow blogger Cynthia accompanied me to mass on Christmas Eve, and sat near the altar through the whole procedure, which must have been an ordeal at times. The padre, knowing some in the crowded church wouldn't be back until Semana Santa (Easter), gave an extra-long homily, little of which Cyn or I could understand. And there were dense clouds of incense.
A young man in a somber black cassock, had the job of keeping the front of the church filled with fragrant smoke. Actually swinging the censer so close to the padres' faces, I had to wonder how they avoided coughing. When it burned out, he'd hurry through the choir loft into the back room for a refill. We singers busily fanned ourselves, except for poor Lolita, la Maestra, whose hands were occupied playing the organ. Occasionally I'd hear a discreet little cough from her.
Heavy incense can not only make breathing difficult, but can cause some people to become dizzy or faint. More than one lapsed Catholic has told me that as a child she would pass out regularly in church. To be fair, the San Fernando services don't always include incense; I was told it's just Christmas, Guadalupe day and Semana Santa.
As Cyn and I walked back toward her apartment she asked me, "Why the incense? What's the deal with that?" Lolita would probably have a better response, but I drew some analogy from worshippers such as Tibetans who believe the smoke carries their prayers to heaven.
Today I 'Stumbled Upon' a more scientific answer, from Brain Mysteries.
"Studies of how those psychoactive drugs work have helped us understand modern neurobiology. The discovery of how incensole acetate, purified from frankincense, works on specific targets in the brain should also help us understand diseases of the nervous system. This study also provides a biological explanation for millennia-old spiritual practices that have persisted across time, distance, culture, language, and religion -- burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over!"
But apparently there are effects beyond warm and tingly:
"...an international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses."