The church rite of lighting candles and lamps is very ancient. For Christians, a fire always burned before the Gospel, not for ease of reading, but as an embodiment of unity with heavenly forces, as a particle of the eternal flame of Jesus Christ.
Divine symbol of fire
Lighting a candle in front of an icon is a tribute to love and respect for the Lord. In residential buildings of Tsarist Russia, always in front of the faces of saints or rich icon cases, lamps burned, which represented a special lamp - church oil was poured into it. This name from the 5th century BC implied a flammable liquid obtained from olive trees. Its second name is oil. For millennia, the needs of the church used oil from the fruits of this tree alone. It is environmentally friendly, burns without residue, without forming resins. Of course, one of the main purposes of a burning lamp is to cleanse the air of pollution. But possessing strong healing properties, oil is also capable of killing microbes.
Church Oil Flavors
As a rule, aromas are present in the tree. He and the fragrant healing herbs filling him as the best gift were mentioned in the Bible. There is a specially recommended selection of herbs added to the spruce trees. Church oil, that is, olive oil, is of the highest standard - Provencal - and more common, known as "wooden". The lamp is a lamp with a floating wick, for its fixation in most plates there is a partition. The number of sayings, verses and synonyms for this word - the oil-tree, the grease-maker, the kaganese, the luminary speaks about its meaning in Russian life. To light a lamp is literally and figuratively to turn to the soul of God. To extinguish it is to finish the work. So the church oil itself, or oil, was overgrown with proverbs, sayings and legends about its miracles.
The meaning of oil in the sacrament of Anointing
Church oil is used not only for lighting fixtures. One of its most important functions is the anointing, the greatest Sacrament of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a sign of the transfer to the person over whom this rite is performed, God's grace. The oil is part of St. Miró, a product necessary for anointing, in which, in addition to church oil itself, there are from 34 to 74 elements. Due to the antiquity of the rite, the origin of some of the ingredients is already unknown, however, in the Orthodox churches, making the Peacemaking, worshipers try to deviate minimally from divine recipes. Church oil itself is always supplemented by a number of traditional incenses - myrrh, sandalwood and frankincense (resins of trees that have long been growing on the Arabian Peninsula), backgammon - the roots of plants of the Valerian family (it was mentioned in his Song by Solomon), rose and other aromatic substances. The smell of burning lamp oil is simply divine! The introduction of a new person to the Church begins with the Sacrament of Baptism and ends with the Sacrament of Anointing. Thus, oil in the church rite plays a dominant role.
Modern substitutes
In the Soviet Union during the years of atheism, expensive olive oil for church needs to be discharged from the countries where these trees grow, was stopped altogether. The clergy were forced to use some substitutes that had passed the rite of consecration. Now this problem has been completely removed, but another has arisen - modern surrogates are persistently offered. The main one is liquid paraffin, “liquid paraffin”. In some respects it surpasses church oil - oil of divine origin. Nevertheless, its effect in the combustion process is not fully understood. In the rites of Orthodoxy, liquid paraffin is often used, although this violates the cult canons. It is strictly forbidden to use low quality technical oil for lighting lamps, because this is associated with a threat to the health of believers.