Holy Week
Holy Week
In Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter. It includes the religious holidays of Pam Sunday, Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday), and Good Friday, and lasts from Palm Sunday until but not including Easter Sunday, as Easter Sunday is the first day of the new season of The Great Fifty Days. It commemorates the last week of the earthly life of Jesus Christ culminating in his crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrecting on Easter Sunday.
Palm Sunday (or Passion Sunday)
Holy Week begins with the sixth Sunday in Lent. This Sunday observes the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that was marked by the crowds who were in Jerusalem for Passover waving palm branches and proclaiming him as the messianic king. The Gospels tell us that Jesus rode into the city on a donkey, enacting the prophecy of Zachariah 9:9, and in so doing emphasized the humility that was to characterize the Kingdom he proclaimed. The irony of his acceptance as the new Davidic King (Mark 11:10) by the crowds who would only five days later cry for his execution should be a sobering reminder of the human tendency to want God on our own terms.
Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday)
Thursday of Holy Week is remembered as the time Jesus ate a final meal together with the men who had followed him for so long. We do not have to solve these historical questions to remember and celebrate in worship what Jesus did and taught and modeled for us here, what God was doing in Jesus the Christ. And the questions should not shift our attention from the real focus of the story: the death and resurrection of Jesus. Traditionally in the Christian Church, this day is known a Maundy Thursday. The term Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum , (from which we get our English word mandate), from a verb that means "to give", "to entrust", or "to order". The term is usually translated "commandment", from John's account of this Thursday night. According to the Fourth Gospel, as Jesus and the Disciples were eating their final meal together before Jesus' arrest, he washed the disciples' feet to illustrate humility and the spirit of servant hood. After they had finished the meal, as they walked into the night toward Gethsemane, Jesus taught his disciples a "new: commandment that was not really new (John 13:34-35 ESV)
34 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. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Good Friday (or Holy Friday)
Firday of Holy Week has been traditionally been called Good Friday or Holy Friday. On this day, the church commemorates Jesus' arrest (since by Jewish customs of counting days from sundwon to sundown it was already Friday), his trial, curcifixion and suffering, death, and bural. Since services on this day are to observe Jesus' death, and since Eucharist is a celebration, there is traditionally no Communion observed on Good Friday. Also, depending on how the services are conducted on this day, all pictures, statutes, and the cross are covered in mourning black, the chancel and alter coverings are replaced with black, and alter candles are extinguished. They are left this way through Saturday, but are always replaced with white before sunrise on Sunday. There are a variety of services of worship for Good Friday, all aimed at allowing worshippers to experience some sense of pain, humiliation, and ending in the journey to the cross.
Holy Saturday
This is the seventh day of the week, the day Jesus rested in the tomb. In the first three Gospel accounts this was the Jewish Sabbath, which provided appropriate symbolism of the seveth day of rest. While some church traditions continue daily services on Saturday, there is no communion served on this day.
** Information and excerts taken from Wikipedia