Adoration of the Eucharist
The basis for all Eucharistic devotion is the fact that Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is the Son of God in human form.
The Eucharistic Food contains, as all are aware, “truly, really and substantially the Body and Blood together with the Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is no wonder, then that the Church, even from the beginning, adored the Body of Christ under the appearance of bread; this is evident from the very rites of the august Sacrifice, which prescribed that the sacred ministers should adore the Most Holy Sacrament by genuflecting or by profoundly bowing their heads.
The Sacred Councils teach that it is the Church’s tradition right from the beginning, to worship “with the same adoration the Word Incarnate as well as His own flesh,” and St. Augustine asserts that:
“No one eats that flesh without first adoring it,”
while he adds that “not only do we not commit
while he adds that “not only do we not commit
a sin by adoring it, but we do sin by not adoring it”
(Encyclical Mediator Dei - 1947 Pius XII - paragraph 129-130)
Everything else depends on this primary article of faith: that the Eucharist contains the living Christ, in the fullness of His human nature, and therefore really present under the sacred species; and in the fullness of His divine nature, and therefore to be adored as God.
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