The Feast of Christ the Priest is a liturgical feast celebrated each year, on the first Thursday after Pentecost, by the Confraternity of Christ the Priest in Australia and all the Roman Catholic dioceses of Spain. Approval was first granted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in 1987. Beginning in 2013 the Catholic Church of the Poland, and in 2014 of the Netherland, has also celebrated this feast.
The Feast focusses firstly on Jesus Christ in His office (Latin: Munus) of Priest. He is the model for our imitation, and when we pray for priests we are praying that they would be like Christ, the compassionate and trustworthy high priest (Hebrews 2:17), ever living to intercede for us (Heb 7:25).
The Second Vatican Council taught many things about the Priesthood of Christ and sharing in that one Priesthood through the Sacraments of Baptism and Orders. This development has been reflected in many subsequent documents. One effective way to build upon this teaching is to establish the Feast of Christ the Priest more widely.
For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year - in fact, forever.
What Pope Pius XI wrote here about the feast in honor of Our Lord’s Kingship can be said just as truly about this feast in honor of Our Lord’s Priesthood.
Since 2013 it is celebrated in Poland as well (Decree, 3 April 2013).
The feast has its proper texts for the Mass, as for the Votive Mass of the Blessed Eucharist B, and approved Latin, Spanish and English texts for the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours.