FIRE, BLESSING OF. — The blessing of fire may have its origins in the early Christian period as a Jewish custom of offering to God the element that gives light and warmth. A remembrance of this is found in the 'lucernarium' of the Ambrosian liturgy. The blessing of fire on Holy Saturday, however, is of several centuries later.
The practice was to hide three lamps late on Holy Thursday during the Tenebrae service, when all lights were extinguished, and to bring them out again on Saturday to light the great paschal candle (v.); the ceremony was intended to recall the three days of Christ’s burial and His Resurrection. Perhaps to strengthen the symbolism further, it was desired to have a new fire on Holy Saturday, obtained from the flint stone and other materials. Whatever the origin of this rite may have been, Pope Zachary (d. 753), writing to St. Boniface in Germany, affirms the Roman use of the hidden lamps and denies the other practice, which seems to have been common among the Germans and Franks: Franz does not exclude the possibility that it was a Christian continuation of a rite in honor of Wotan at the beginning of spring; this interpretation is not inconsistent with the hypothesis of a more precise representation of the symbol, so dear to the Carolingian school; indeed, one may have prepared the way for the other, favored also by the fact that in the Middle Ages anything to be used in worship was first blessed. Schuster states that the blessing of fire was introduced at Rome as a kind of compromise between Gallican usages and the Roman liturgy, which was concluded in the early Carolingian period. In the appendix to the 'Ordo Romanus I' (PL 78, 960), the new fire is procured on Holy Thursday, though it will also be used on Saturday. Annalario (De ecc. offic., IV, 22), however, suggests that the lighting took place on each of the three days of the sacred Triduum. Only the Ordo X (12th cent.) gives the rite as it is today, including the prayers that were adapted from the ancient rite of lighting the evening candle, which at the beginning of the sacred vigil had to be lit beside the lectern, “as a kind of poetic sacrifice of light in homage to Him who is the light of the world” (Schuster).
The lighting of the new fire was also of great importance for domestic life. At Rome, simultaneously with the extinguishing of the candles in the church, the fires in every home were also extinguished and then relit with pieces of wood blessed with the new fire: “Et de ipso igne accendunt in omni domo, quia omnis anterior extingui debat” (Ord. Rom. I: PL 78, 955).
After the blessing of the fire follows that of the five grains of incense, which the deacon will then fix into the paschal candle. “The prayer recited by the celebrant for this purpose was part of the blessing formula for the candle contained in the Gelasian Sacramentary” (L. Muratori, Lit. Rom. vestis, I, Venice 1748, cap. 565). To adapt it to the incense, the original term hunc incensum (= to lit fire) was unfortunately twisted into hoc incensum (= for incense), without noticing that the whole context refers instead to the nocturnum splendorem, visibly lit by man but invisibly by the regenerating hand of God (Rit. hetti). — See pl. CXXII.