One of the best Coptic church’s hymns is “Fay Itaf Enf”, as we hymn happily: “He who gave himself up as an acceptable sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of our race. And His Good Father smelled the scent of His sacrifice at evening time on the Golgotha.” The truth is that the origin of this hymn is derived from taking Jesus Christ as a symbol of the burnt sacrifice, which was all burnt to become: “a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.” (Leviticus 1:9). There are other places in the Holy Bible that shows that not only the pleasant aroma of a burnt sacrifice that pleases God, when Noah built an altar for God after coming out from the ark and sacrificed burnt offerings on it: “The lord smelled the pleasant aroma.” (Genesis 8:21). When Jacob went close to his father Isaac to have his blessing “So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed.” (Genesis 27:27). God ordered Mouses to make an altar of incense in the Tabernacle “Aaron must burn fragrant incense on the altar every morning when he tends the lamps, he must burn incense again when he lights the lamps at twilight, so incense will burn regularly before the Lord” (Exodus 30:7-8). As for the Song of Solomon’s groom praised his bride: “How much more pleasing is the fragrance of your perfume more than all kinds of spices!… The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.” (Song of Solomon 4:10-11)
As for Paul’s, the apostle, saying: “For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:15), in it he brilliantly crystallizes our relationship with God the Father through Christ: If the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was smelled by God the Father as a fragrance of contentment and pleasure, then everyone who acts like Christ and transforms into His image becomes to God the Father the sweet fragrance of Christ. That’s the meaning of the word “God”. No one would be able to enter into the sanctuaries of God and obtain the blessing, like Jacob, except for the one who carries within himself the sweet scent of Christ, which is a very distinctive scent, in which God the Father is never deceived. It is his gorgeous and beautiful blood scent, which reddened his clothes and the clothes of all those who followed him.
But how does one acquire the sweet fragrance of Christ that pleases God the Father? St. Isaac the Syrian says: “The smell of the sweat of tiredness in prayer is better than the smell of incense to the Lord.” We can then say that on the same scale, every act of asceticism and self-mortification, every act of mercy, every thought of righteousness and holiness, every word reformed with grace, and every compassion towards the other, is a sweet fragrance that quickly ascends and spreads, as on earth as it is in heaven. Perhaps this is the reason why the sweet, fragrant scents waft from the bodies of many saints and accompany their apparitions, as stated in the biographies of their lives recorded in the synaxarium.
As for Isaiah’s saying “And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stench” (Isaiah 3:24) he describes the condition of every blasphemous, negligent, and lazy person in his worship and spiritual struggle. Then the smell of the rottenness of his sins, laziness, complacency, and indulgence comes out, and thus this phrase is written in his heavenly recording: “by this time there is a stench” (John 11:39). But thanks to God, who made the smell of the blood of His Son much stronger than the stench of sin. Thanks to Christ’s compassion who never loathes the rotten smell of our graves to complete our salvation. He is too pure for the stench of sin to cling to Him. Rather, when He enters our graves to resurrect us, His exalted sweetness is smelt out of them
