I love the smell of incense in church.  It smells like Church to me, to crib from Apocalyspe Now.  Simple as that. 

Incense at mass has to be experienced.  Watching Christmas Eve Mass from St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican does not prepare you for the experience.  Most Protestants I have talked to about this expect it to be an acrid, bitter aroma.  Leaving a taste of cigar ash in the mouth.  Actually, I found it quite pleasant from the very first encounter.  Seductive.  Redolent of childhood food, but beyond Proustian in the connection of memory, because the smell of the incense was triggering comforting nostalgia yet it was shocking in its newness to me.  Incense was "helping me remember things I don't know."

While the liturgical reasons for incensing the sanctuary and alter before and during mass are valid, for me watching acolytes swinging the incensor and smelling the warm perfume (toasted Oatmeal with brown sugar/cinammon/nutmeg on a early December morning in my mother's kitchen?) for the first time (and every time since) also took me back to ancient days of man offering prayers to God "in the old country."  Memories I do not have first hand knowledge of, yet now share deeply and intimately.

Incense to me always makes worship and liturgy more larger than life, and yet more humbling; a true showing of human supplication to God. To me midnight Christmas Eve Mass, Easter Vigil, or Benediction are all the more special because of the presence of incense. 

Incense is refered to in Holy Scripture several times.  In Proverbs (27:9) we come across the ascertion that "perfume and incense make the heart glad."  In Revelation (8:4), "the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of an angel."  There is even a Bible verse referring to incense that lies at the heart of a significant Catholic liturgy during Lent.

In my mind the most significant Bible reference to incense is in the Psalmody at the heart of Evening Vespers during the six week season of Lent.  The six weeks of repentance, prayer, fasting and almsgiving prior to Easter contain many devotions (Stations of the Cross) and annually repeated scripture readings from John (Woman at the Well, Man once Blind, traditional elements of liturgy (Scruitinies)

In my mind, nothing has the ability to get under the skin and get to the heart of the season in the Wednesday night Lenten Evening Vespers service at my parish that features incense in song and ritual.  During the the evening portion of the Liturgy of the Hours there is a hymn with a haunting chant melody and lyrics taken directly from Psalms 141: "My prayer rises before you like incense/it lifts like my hands before you like an  evening offering."As we sing this Psalmody as part of during Lent, and as the actual incense fills the sanctuary, those of us there contemplate our desire to turn away from our acts and patterns of sin; turning more deeply toward the words and ways of God.  This liturgy quickly became one of my is an underrated delights of my liturgical year, and the psalmody one of the hymns/elements I did not have to "work at" to memorize during the home stretch toward my Confirmation in 2007.

I am so happy to now have specific memories of church incense in liturgy, grace and salvation. To not merely have the smell of incense trigger scenes of nostalgia for food and the family home.  The smell and sight of incense as a Catholic (different from an visitor or Inquiry student at mass) is liturgy at it's most personal.  Midnight Mass and intense prayers for peace on the streets of Oakland.  Easter Vigil and the ecstasy of Confirmation of First Eucharist.  The wonder at witnessing/participating ed Benediction and reciting the Divine Praises.  Maybe most personal, the personal memories of ongoing gratitude and repentance at Wednesday night Lenten Evening Vespers.

Of course, in reality the incense of church is not ordor mask like patchouli oil of Deadhead, or some secret drug as the Rastafarian's use marijuana.  Rather, it is the pleasing aroma of smoldering frankincense; gift to God, bore hundreds of miles by Wise Men from the east.