Holy Week

Passion Week; Great and Holy Week in the Orthodox churches

The week before Easter, from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday; the Orthodox churches usually keep it later, on the Julian reckoning

He speaks of some who went without food for the whole six days before Easter. The Catholic Encyclopedia reads this as a sign that a severe fast of those days may be older than the 4th century. This is the first sure record of the week as a time apart, and it is a record of a fast, not of services.

Canon 48 corrects two customs at baptism: those baptized are not to put coins in the shell, and their feet are not to be washed by priests or clergy. So a washing of feet at baptism was known in Spain, and the council forbade the clergy to do it; it does not commend the custom. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that a washing of feet at baptism was kept for centuries in Gaul, Milan and Ireland. It was tied to baptism, not to a week of the year. The church’s washing of feet on the Thursday before Easter comes much later (H7).

Britannica writes that before Nicaea the church kept one great feast, on the night between Saturday and Easter morning, celebrated as the Christian Passover, and that at first only Good Friday and Holy Saturday were observed as holy days. It says the other days of the week were added by the beginning of the 3rd century, but names no early text for that. This is a modern summary, and the Catholic Encyclopedia notes it is not known whether the feeling that these days were holy was primitive.

claimed for the 4th century

Tradition says the Virgin Mary visited the scenes of the Passion every day, and some trace the Stations of the Cross to her or to Constantine’s day. The Catholic Encyclopedia finds no direct evidence of any set devotion then, and notes that Egeria, who describes every other exercise in detail, says nothing about it.

His Festal Letters give the church its first name for the week. In 331 he writes that the church begins “the holy week of the great pasch” on the tenth of the Egyptian month Pharmuthi, with longer prayers, fasting and watching.

Her diary of the week in Jerusalem is the first account of each day at its own place. On the Sunday before Easter the bishop is led down the Mount of Olives, with the people going before him with hymns and carrying branches of palm and olive. On Good Friday the people come one by one to kiss the wood of the cross. Scholars date her visit about 381 to 384, though the Catholic Encyclopedia says 388 is probable. Churches now stood at the places of the events, and pilgrims such as Egeria carried what they saw back to their own churches.

all of them bearing branches, some of palms and some of olives

Commands all bishops and priests, under pain of excommunication, to wash the feet of those under them. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that the liturgical washing of feet established itself late, in East and West, and this is the first order for it in these records, more than six centuries after the church began. The word “maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum novum, “a new commandment”.

The Franciscans are given care of the holy places. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that indulgences attached to visits at the places of the Passion are the likely origin of the Stations of the Cross as they are now kept. The English pilgrim William Wey, who visited in 1458 and 1462, is the first to use the word “stations” for the halting-places. Fourteen Stations are now prescribed, and the Stations did not become general before the end of the 17th century.

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says festival days, commonly called holy days, have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued. Strict Presbyterian bodies keep only the Lord’s Day on this ground.

Writing in a paper read in the Churches of Christ, he objects to churches that keep Easter Sunday and the Lent season, and to the canons that bound communion at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide. Christ asked His disciples to remember His death in the bread and the fruit of the vine, and they did so on the first day of the week. He grants that individuals may do some things at home that the church may not do as part of its worship. It is one writer’s view, not a church statement.

And we are told that the early disciples did this regularly, upon the first day of the week.

Its magazine article on the days of the crucifixion sets the crucifixion on Wednesday, not Friday, and the resurrection near sunset on the Saturday. It puts the Passover meal on the Tuesday evening, which the writer counts as the start of Nisan 14. It argues that this alone fits Jesus’ words about three days and three nights. The United Church of God keeps the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread as God’s holy days and not the church’s Holy Week.

Before Nicaea the church kept one Pascha: a fast and a Saturday-night vigil that celebrated Christ’s death and resurrection together (H3). In the later 4th century, when churches stood at the holy places, Jerusalem began to mark each event of the week on its own day and at its own place, and pilgrims such as Egeria spread what they saw (H6). The Stations of the Cross, the Tenebrae service and the Three Hours on Good Friday are medieval or later additions (H8).

Historians divide on how the day-by-day pattern arose. The classic account, by Gregory Dix, holds that Jerusalem’s round of services broke up an older single Pascha. Later scholars, such as Thomas Talley, argue that a day-by-day remembrance also arose in other places, and the question is still open. Either way, the week as a cycle is a development of the 4th century and after, and not a thing of the New Testament.

Jerusalem broke up the single Pascha

Day-by-day remembrance arose in several places

Roman Catholics

The Eastern Orthodox churches

Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists

Many evangelical and Baptist churches

Mennonites, the Amish and the Church of the Brethren

Strict confessional Presbyterians

Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends)

The Churches of Christ

The Seventh-day Adventist Church

Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Churches of God in the Armstrong tradition

Palm Sunday

Palms are blessed and carried in procession, and the account of the Passion is sung or read. Evangelical churches usually carry palms and preach, without ceremony. The day’s root is the crowd with palm branches in John 12:13, and the procession itself is first recorded at Jerusalem (H6).

Maundy Thursday

The Mass of the Lord’s Supper for Catholics, the Liturgy of St. Basil and the Twelve Passion Gospels for the Orthodox, communion for Protestants. Foot-washing is a rite for Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans and an ordinance for the Brethren and Mennonites (H7).

Good Friday

No Mass for Catholics: the Passion is read, the cross is venerated and communion is given from the reserved bread. Orthodox churches carry the embroidered burial cloth in procession. Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches hold the Three Hours from noon to 3 p.m., or Tenebrae, in which candles are put out.

Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil

Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans keep the Vigil after dark, with new fire, the paschal candle, readings and baptisms. The Orthodox hold the Liturgy of St. Basil, then the midnight Paschal service.

The Stations of the Cross

Fourteen stopping-places that recall the way to the cross, walked in churches or in street processions on Good Friday. They grew from the Franciscans’ care of the holy places (H8).

Tenebrae

A service in which candles are put out one by one, ending in a loud noise. The putting out of lights is judged probably as old as the 5th century in the night office, and the service is named by the 9th century.

Fasting and a quiet day

Catholic law calls for fasting and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Some Protestants and others take the day as a quiet day of prayer, a personal practice with no church rule behind it.

The Lord appointed one remembrance of that week, and it is weekly

The Lord gave the Supper to proclaim His death till he come, and the church broke bread on the first day (S1, S2).

On the night He was betrayed He took bread and the cup and said, “this do in remembrance of me”. Paul says what the Supper does: “ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come” (S1). That is the remembrance of the cross God appointed, and the church kept it on the first day of the week (S2). Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly cycle of services for the days of the week.

The same reasoning bears on a yearly Supper. The text says “as often as ye eat this bread”, and Luke records the church’s breaking of bread on the first day (S2). Weekly is the example set. A Supper kept once a year, as a Memorial or a Passover, is a different pattern from the one the New Testament shows.

The Gospels tell the week in full and command no yearly keeping of it

The week is told as the gospel to be preached, with the cross and the empty tomb at its center (S3).

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give a large share of their pages to this week. They tell it as the gospel: that the Christ should be delivered up, crucified, and rise on the third day (S3). The church should preach it, in full, on any Lord’s Day. But none of the four tells the church to keep the week, or any day of it, each year. The only remembrance the Gospels record Him appointing is the Supper (A1).

Name the events as Scripture does. He came to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, the crowd took palm branches, He ate the Passover with His disciples, and He was crucified on the day of Preparation. The church’s names for the days (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday) are the church’s names, and the Gospels use none of them.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to; Colossians 2 says no one may judge over it (S4, S5).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S4). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian holy week. It does give the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord. Colossians 2:16-17 adds that no one may judge a believer “in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day” (S5). Scholars differ on what the Colossian teaching was, but the list matches the days of Israel’s law.

Some read these texts as concerning Jewish days only, so that they neither forbid nor permit a Christian feast. Others read them as a rule that no day may be required of a believer. On either reading, no one may bind a day on a brother. A Christian may therefore spend the week in prayer and reading. They may not make it binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy week (A1).

Jesus says He will be “three days and three nights” in the earth. A burial on Friday evening gives two nights, not three, so Good Friday keeps the wrong day. Those who argue for a Wednesday crucifixion read John 19:31’s “high day” as an annual sabbath, and set Mark 16:1 beside Luke 23:56 to find two sabbaths that week.

The argument is a real one and it is not a charge against the observance of Holy Week as such. It is a dispute over the weekday. The other side reads Mark 15:42 as setting the burial on the Preparation, “the day before the sabbath” (S12), the weekly sabbath, and takes the “high day” of John 19:31 to be that sabbath in the week of the Passover. It adds that Scripture speaks of the same event as “the third day” (Luke 24:46) and as three days and three nights, so any chronology must satisfy both. On the first day of the week the two going to Emmaus say “it is now the third day since these things came to pass” (Luke 24:21), and defenders of Friday add that part of a day was counted as a whole day. The Wednesday reading answers with its two sabbaths, and it is held by sincere students of the text. Whichever reading is right, it is a matter of harmonizing the texts, and neither answer is a test of fellowship. The case against a yearly Holy Week does not depend on which day it was.

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”, and fears his labor was in vain. A holy week is such a calendar.

The Galatians were Gentiles who had worshiped no gods (verse 8) and were now taking up the law’s calendar as a way to stand right with God (verse 21 and 5:4). Scholars differ whether their days were pagan or Jewish. The text strikes at days made necessary for standing with God, which fits a week imposed on the church as a duty. It does not name Holy Week, and it does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S4). The case against the church’s Holy Week rests on the pattern (A1), not on this passage alone.

Services the Lord never gave, such as Tenebrae and the Stations, are worship by the precepts of men. The strict Presbyterians use this text against them.

This is a right use for the part that matters. Jesus condemns setting aside a command of God for a human tradition (verses 3-6) and teaching human rules as God’s doctrine. A church that binds the rites of the week on its members as a duty, or presents them as part of the worship God commands, does just that. It does not reach a Christian who takes part in a quiet day at home, or a service of Scripture readings, without calling it God’s command (A3).

Kissing the cross on Good Friday is bowing down to a likeness the Lord forbade, and the second commandment condemns it.

The commandment forbids making a likeness to bow down to and serve. Those who venerate the cross say they honor Christ who died on it, not the wood, and a plain cross is not a carved likeness of anything in heaven or earth. But the commandment’s second clause is about bowing down, and in Egeria’s account the people came one by one and, bowing down at the table, kissed the wood (H6). When Israel burned incense to the brazen serpent, a thing God Himself had ordered made, Hezekiah broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4). The New Testament glories in the cross as the death of Christ (Galatians 6:14) and shows no honor paid to the wood in the church’s worship. Venerating it is an addition (A1), and bowing to the wood comes close to the very act this commandment forbids.

The crowd took palm branches and cried “Hosanna”. The church does well to do the same each year, on the day.

The crowd greeted Jesus on the day He came, and the Gospels record it as part of the story that shows who He is (A2). They do not say the church is to repeat it. A church may sing “Hosanna” in its worship on any Lord’s Day. A yearly procession of palms rests on the custom first recorded at Jerusalem in the 4th century (H6), not on the text.

Jesus says “ye also ought to wash one another’s feet” and calls it an example. The Mennonites, the Brethren and others take it as a rite to keep, and Maundy Thursday builds on it.

Readers divide over whether it is an ordinance or an example of humility. The setting favors the second: Jesus ties the washing to serving one another, not to a day or a place or an assembly. Where the foot-washing is done as an act of service, by those who understand it so, there is no fault in it (A3). What the text does not give is a yearly rite on the Thursday of a holy week, kept by a bishop or priest as a liturgical act (H7).

The Gospels fix the burial on the day of Preparation, the day before the sabbath, and the resurrection on the first day. This is the Friday-to-Sunday pattern the church has kept as Good Friday and Easter.

Mark gives the burial on the Preparation, the day before the sabbath, and the first day follows the sabbath. That is good evidence that the church’s weekday is the right one. But a right weekday is a good reading of the Gospels. It is not a command to keep the day. The text tells when the events were, not that the church should keep them each year (A2).

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the United Church of God say Jesus commanded a remembrance of His death, and that a remembrance on the anniversary of that night, each year, keeps His command. Christ’s death was at the Passover, a yearly feast.

The command is to do this “in remembrance of me”. Luke gives no date and no interval, and Paul adds “as often as” (S1). The only example of the church’s time for it is the first day of the week (S2), which does not fit a once-a-year observance. Christ died at the Passover, but the New Testament does not call the church’s Supper a Passover, and the church it shows breaks bread on the first day. A yearly Memorial or Passover departs from the apostolic pattern on that account (A1).

Study

• The Gospels give a large share of their pages to the last week of Jesus’ life. Why might that be, if they also give no command to keep it each year?
• Egeria’s Jerusalem (H6) gave each event its own day and place. What changes when a church moves from preaching the events to staging them?
• Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:26 put the Supper on the first day, weekly. Why is a Supper once a year a different pattern from that one?
• Whether the crucifixion was on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday is disputed among believers who all honor the text. Should that ever be a test of fellowship?
• Galatians 4:10 and Colossians 2:16-17 are often quoted against Holy Week. Read each in its chapter: whom was Paul writing to, and about what days?

Easter

Lent

Ascension Day

Christmas

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