Mediator Dei - Eucharistic Cult

Eucharistic Cult

The Eucharist is a renewal of the sacrifice on the cross. Christ is the Priest, the Sacrifice and the Purpose of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The faithful should participate but they do not have priestly authority. They participate in the sacrifice together with the priest. They participate by cleansing the souls of arrogance, anger, guilt, lust and other sins, and thus see more clearly the picture of Christ in themselves.

Mediator Dei advises the bishops to create offices to encourage active participation and dignified services, and to ensure, that individual priests do not use the Eucharist as experiments for their own purposes. The encyclical encourages the faithful to participate in Holy Communion and uses the terms, spiritual and sacramental communion. Communion must be followed by a thanksgiving.

The encyclical encourages the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and in Eucharistic Blessings. The historical Jesus and the Eucharist cannot be separated. The full liturgy opens to the faithful the mystery of the cross, are in the likeness of their Redeemer.

All the elements of the liturgy, then, would have us reproduce in our hearts the likeness of the divine Redeemer through the mystery of the cross, according to the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, "With Christ I am nailed to the cross. I live, now not I, but Christ live in me." Gal. 2:19-20. Thus we become a victim, as it were, along with Christ to increase the glory of the eternal Father.

Pius XII opposed excesses in "Mediator Dei":

Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion.

But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.

Pius XII stated that exaggerated reforms have harmful effects on Catholic spirituality: This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation.