1Tim 2:5-6
Again, our mediator is not anybody other than Jesus Christ. Those who attempt to mediate for Him become antiChrist or a counterfeit substitute for Christ.
We are each part of the royal priesthood during the Church Age. The High Priest is our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, through whom we all have access to God the Father when in fellowship with Him.
Christ founded His Church as a supernatural society, the Kingdom of God. In this society there must be the power of ruling; and also the principles by which the members are to attain their supernatural end, viz., supernatural truth, which is held by faith, and super-natural grace by which man is formally elevated to the supernatural order. Thus, besides the power of jurisdiction, the Church has the power of teaching (magisterium) and the power of conferring grace (power of order).
This power of order was committed by our Lord to His Apostles, who were to continue His work and to be His earthly representatives. The Apostles received their power from Christ: “as the Father hath sent me, I also send you” (John, xx, 21).
Christ possessed fullness of power in virtue of His priesthood—of His office as Redeemer and Mediator. He merited the grace which freed man from the bondage of sin, which grace is applied to man immediately by the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and immediately by the sacraments.
He gave His Apostles the power to offer the Sacrifice (Luke, xxii, 19), and dispense the sacraments (Matt., xxviii, 18; John, xx, 22, 23); thus making them priests.
It is true that every Christian receives sanctifying grace which confers on him a priesthood. Even as Israel under the Old dispensation was to God “a priestly kingdom” (Exod., xix, 4-6), thus under the New, all Christians are “a kingly priesthood” (I Pet., ii, 9); but now as then the special and sacramental priesthood strengthens and perfects the universal priesthood (cf. II Cor., iii, 3, 6; Rom., xv, 16).