What is the history of votive candles and offerings in the Catholic church? Some churches have them and some don't.

James Rinaldo

Thank you so much for your E-mail. Finally, a question that has nothing to do with Harry Potter!

In order to talk about votive candles, we have to define the topic and then put ourselves back before electric light.  "Votive" means having to do with a vow, or with devotion. We Catholics are all about vows. As I'm always pointing out, the very word sacrament is a Latin word that  means an oath to the death. We are a sacramental church, that is, a covenant church. This idea of a covenant extends to our use of candles. When we light a candle, we are committing our souls to God in prayer.

Now, we have to go back a hundred or so years, before electric light. Candles were important. They were the usual way of providing light along with oil lamps. Candles are reported as far back as the time of the Pharaohs. They were smoky affairs made of animal fat that gave off dark smoke and smelled like a fast food restaurant. Whale oil and beeswax were expensive, but gave off no smoke nor smell and were thus candles of the best quality, appropriate for the purpose of worship.

Candles were used in the early church for (prepared to be amazed)... lighting! But like our Jewish cousins we invest the simplest things with symbolism, because God speaks to us in the simplest detail of our lives.  The transition from first century Judaism to universal Christianity (Catholicism) was fairly seamless. The first Christians had no idea that they were not Jewish. They were just Jews who had acknowledged Jesus the Messiah. They brought their music, their rituals and their candles with them. Jews light candles on every Sabbath as they recite a special blessing, but immediately before this they make an offering in a special box called a pushke, designed for the purpose. The offering is to go to charitable work. The lighting and blessing of candles go back to Bible times, the antiquity of the offering, who knows?  We can be quite sure that offerings were made for the lighting oil of the temple. The very act of paying for the lighting cost of the temple, and thus, of the church is in itself a charitable act.  (Candles cost money. Bees don't work for free, you know.)

It is reasonable to think that Christians attached the same symbolism to the lighting of candles that their earliest forbears, the Jewish Christians did, and in addition to the usual Jewish symbolism was added the fact that Jesus had said "I am the light of the world." (John 8:12) 

We know from the writing of people like Tertullian (c. 200 AD) that Christians were lighting candles as part for their worship in the earliest days and have never stopped since. It was a common custom to use candles as part of burial processions, evening prayer services and as remembrances at tombs especially those of the martyrs.

In Jewish thought, the candle flame is most closely associated with the human soul. It is insubstantial, yet real and powerful. All the darkness in the world cannot overpower the light of a single candle. A dear friend, a Rabbi, explained to me that Jews believe God sends extra souls to help a person in the celebration of religious duties and these extra souls are symbolized by the lighting of candles. I nodded appreciatively, not having a clue as to what that might mean.

It was finally explained to me by another friend, a Christian. He had been away from the Lord and the Church for a long time, and was traveling through the world with a pack on his back. The Lord had begun to call him back to Himself and so he stopped at the tomb of St. Francis in Assisi Italy. He knelt in prayer at the great Saint’s tomb renewing himself in the presence of God that filled that holy place. In what seemed so short a time, his train was about to leave, so he did something he had not done in very long time, and had probably never done with any understanding: He lit a candle. It meant that he wanted to stay, in fact his heart and soul remained in prayer there, even though he had to leave.

It was what the rabbi had meant. God gave him an extra soul to help him in prayer. His heart remained at the shrine. This is the meaning of the votive candle. It symbolizes the soul at prayer. For Christians it also symbolizes the presence of God as in the use of the large Paschal candle at Easter and the light left glowing in the sanctuary when Christ is present in the tabernacle.

You also ask why some churches have them and some do not. Well, the devil loves to mimic the truth, so the devil has a use for candles too. We Christians use candles to conquer the darkness. The devil uses them to highlight it.

Sometimes the small light of a candle can make the darkness around it feel pretty creepy. Spiritualists and voodoo practitioners light candles not to symbolize anything but  as parts of spells designed to force the "powers' to do my will. You can go to any grocery store in a big city and find what appear to be Catholic candles on sale. They have images on them that look like our Blessed Mother, or our Lord and His crucifixion, but look more closely. Read the prayer that comes with it. Usually it's about getting what I want and not about giving myself to God.

You'll find candles devoted to the "African Powers," or the "All-powerful Hand." I even remember seeing a candle titled "Death to my Enemies."  These are not Catholic, no matter how fervently their devotees claim them to be. Some people misuse the most beautiful symbols and think they are doing something religious. Humbug!

For many, prayer is about getting God, or the gods or the powers of whatever, to do my will. I have known people who light a candle and somehow think God owes them. Do you really think that the God who set the sun to blazing is impressed with a cheap piece of paraffin with a voodoo prayer written on the side that you bought at the grocery store for $1.50?  For a true Catholic, prayer and the lighting of candles is all about giving myself to God without reservation. Not about conning God into doing what I want.

So why do some Catholic churches have them and some don't?

In my long distant youth, (the groovy sixties early seventies) we believed that we were the generation that was going to rescue the world and the church from darkness and superstition because we were better and smarter than all of our ancestors. Well, that experiment really filled the church to overflowing, didn't it? We believed that if we just got rid of all the dead weight like candles and ritual and Gregorian chant, and popes and archaic rules like the ten commandments, especially that pesky one about not committing adultery, the world would finally arrive at the age of Aquarius and would be all right. No more Italian grandmas lighting a little candle and pouring their hearts out to God and the saints. No, we were going to invent new and better rituals.

So instead of recognizing the true and beautiful meaning of candle lighting, we just got rid of the candles. Then we went on to invent new rituals, you guessed it, that involved candles. We were idiots.

So modern churches, especially those built in or renovated in the groovy old days, tend not to have candles, that is until their modern pastors realize that candles are a gold mine, or, on that rare occasion, when the pastor understands how beautiful a symbol it is and restores it.

Yours sincerely,

Rev. Know-It-All