Holy Week is the week right before Easter. Christians set aside this time to remember Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection. It is also the last week of Lent.
When is Holy Week this Year?
This year, Holy Week will take place Sunday, April 2, 2023 – Saturday, April 8, 2023. It is followed by the Easter Season, which celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.
Holy Week Calendar 2023
4/02 | Palm Sunday |
4/03 | Holy Monday |
4/04 | Holy Tuesday |
4/05 | Holy Wednesday |
4/06 | Holy Thursday |
4/07 | Good Friday |
4/08 | Holy Saturday |
The time between the evening of Holy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday is known as the Sacred Paschal Triduum—the holiest three days of the Church’s year.
The Paschal mystery has two aspects: by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life. This new life is above all justification that reinstates us in God’s grace…
Chatechism of the catholic church (CCC) 654
What Happens on the Days of Holy Week?
On the days of Holy Week, Christians recall the suffering Jesus experienced leading up to his crucifixion.
- Palm Sunday – commemorates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem.
- Holy Thursday – commemorates the Last Supper and the betrayal by Judas.
- Good Friday – commemorates the suffering, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus.
- Holy Saturday – commemorates the last day Jesus’ body lay in the tomb before he resurrected from the dead.
Holy Week traditions in the Catholic Church include:
- Parishioners receive palms on Palm Sunday and they are blessed during the Palm Sunday mass. The palms represent Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem where the people received him with praise and laid palms at his feet in homage to him.
- A Washing of the Feet ceremony takes place on Holy Thursday, recalling how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples after the Last Supper. Jesus performed this humble act as an example of how we should serve one another.
- Priests wear red vestments during Holy week, specifically on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, to symbolize the blood of martyrdom and suffering of Jesus.
- Veneration of the Cross takes place on Good Friday. People may touch, kiss, or kneel down before the cross to honor the Lord. It is appropriate on this day to focus our gaze on the cross as we remember Jesus’ crucifixion.
- From Good Friday to Holy Saturday, some churches remove all decorations, statues, and crucifixes or cover them with a black or purple cloth. Holy water is removed from the fonts. These practices remind us that Jesus faced a real death on the cross, and then “there was darkness over the whole land” (Mark 15: 33).
- After Good Friday, the Eucharist is not celebrated again until the Easter Vigil. We eagerly await his reappearance at Easter when he will rise from the dead.
All of these actions allow us to relive and honor the events that took place for our salvation through Jesus’ death on the cross. We celebrate Holy Week in anticipation of the greatest feast day of the year: Easter.
On Easter Sunday, we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead and the empty tomb.
When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.
John 20: 6 – 8
I pray that you all have a blessed Holy Week that will fully prepare your heart for the “Feast of Feasts.”