Preparing for Holy Week
Holy Week is a special week in the church calendar. It takes place during the final week of Lent and concludes on the first Sunday in Eastertide. During Holy Week, Christians throughout history and across the world today have set aside time as sacred space to remember the events of the last week of Jesus’ life—his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper He shared with His disciples and His washing of their feet, His betrayal, arrest, sufferings, crucifixion, and death, and finally His resurrection on Easter morning.
With all of these events in view, Holy Week carries many emotions that are appropriate for followers of Jesus to feel, call to mind, and embrace. The events of Palm Sunday and Jesus hailed a King and Messiah are celebratory and its right to rejoice. The commemoration of Maundy Thursday, the institution of the communion meal, and the command to Christ’s followers to love and serve each other as Christ has served them involves intimate, even awkward expressions of love and service. Good Friday is a somber, even at times scary service that embraces feelings of darkness, lament, and UN-resolution in the shadow of Calvary’s cross. Easter carries notes of sudden and joy-filled surprise, exultation, and rejoicing at the Good News that Christ is not dead, the tomb is empty, and Jesus has been raised!
We’d love to invite you to prepare your heart and mind for Holy Week, to center yourself on Jesus and ready yourself to follow in His footsteps as we journey through these days. To serve you in this spiritual work of preparation, you can read below the prefaces for each of the special days of Holy Week below. These are taken from the ACNA Book of Common Prayer 2019:
PALM SUNDAY - Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. the procession with palms which was already observed in Jerusalem in the fourth century calls to mind the triumphal entry of JEsus, our Lord and King, into Jerusalem. The procession is fundamentally an act of worship, witness, and devotion to our Lord. The purposes of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem was to fulfill his Father’s will. The emphasis of the liturgy turns to the days that lie ahead in Holy Week. We who hail Jesus as King one moment, may in the next deny him, even joining with the crowd in shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
MAUNDY THURSDAY - The Paschal mystery—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Christian Gospel. The evening of Maundy Thursday begins the Triduum (the sacred 3 days). This service, together with Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter form a single liturgy. Maundy Thursday receives its name from the mandatum (commandment) given by our Lord: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). At the Last Supper, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and commanded them to love and serve one another as He had done. This day commemorates the Lord’s example of servant ministry, the institution of the Eucharist, the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the betrayal leading to the crucifixion.
GOOD FRIDAY - The Good Friday liturgy is the second part of the Triduum. This most somber of all days is appropriately marked by fasting, abstinence, and penitence, leading us to focus on Jesus and the meaning of His Cross. Some churches do not use musical instruments or bells on this day. The church is often darkened. The bare, stark appearance of the church serves as a reminder of the solemnity and the sorrow of the day. The Lord of Life was rejected, mocked, scourged and then put to death on the Cross. The faithful are reminded of the role which their own sin played in this suffering and agony, as Christ took all sin upon himself, in obedience to His Father’s will. By the Cross, we are redeemed, set free from bondage to sin and death. The Cross is a sign of God’s never-ending love for us. It is a sign of life, in the midst of death.
EASTER SUNDAY - On this day, we join with the women at the tomb and the disciples of Christ in the locked room in Jerusalem, experiencing sudden surprise and joy that the tomb of Jesus is empty, and God has raised Christ, our Savior and Lord from the dead as a first-fruits of a New Creation. Everything is different now! The liturgical color changes from Lenten purple to Easter white. The saying of Alleluia returns to our liturgy in joyful shouts. We sing songs of exultant celebration, and we begin the SEASON of Easter which lasts for 50 days—longer than the penitential period of Lent.