HOLY WEEK

Holy Week begins with the celebration on the Sunday before Good Friday of the
Triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem or Palm Sunday.

Holy Week is the annual Christian commemoration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, it is a period of intense liturgical activity within the various confessions.
Christians. It begins on Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday, although its
The celebration usually begins in various places on the previous Friday (Friday of Sorrows) and is considered part
of the same on Easter Sunday. The date of the celebration is variable (between March and April)
according to the year) as it depends on the lunar calendar. Holy Week is preceded by Lent, which
it concludes in Holy Week where the Eucharist is celebrated on Holy Thursday, it commemorates the
Crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday and the Resurrection at the Easter Vigil during the night of Saturday
Holy Sunday of Resurrection. During Holy Week, numerous displays take place
popular religiosity around the world, highlighting the processions and the representations of the
Passion.

Paschal Triduum

The most important days of Holy Week are those formed by the so-called Paschal Triduum: The
introduction to the Triduum (Holy Thursday and Good Friday), in which the death of Christ is commemorated;
Holy Saturday, in which Christ in the tomb is commemorated, and Easter Sunday of the
Resurrection.

THE DATE OF HOLY WEEK

It is at the First Council of Nicea (in the year 325) where a solution is finally reached for this.
subject. It established that Easter Sunday was to be celebrated by fulfilling certain
certain rules:

That Easter would be celebrated on Sunday.

That Christians should never celebrate Easter twice in the same year. This has its
explanation of why the new year started at the spring equinox, for which it was prohibited the
celebration of Easter before the actual equinox (before the entry of the Sun into Aries).

However, there were still differences between the Church of Rome and the Church of Alexandria, although
the Council of Nicaea sided with the Alexandrians, establishing the custom that the date of the
Easter was calculated in Alexandria, which communicated it to Rome, which spread the calculation to the rest of the
Christianity.

Finally, Dionysius the Exiguus (in the year 525), from Rome convinced of the virtues of
Alejandrian calculation, finally unifying the calculation of the Christian Easter.

Easter Sunday is the Sunday immediately following the first full moon after the
March equinox and it must be calculated using the astronomical full moon. Therefore it may not occur
before March 22 and April 25 at the latest.

The vacation cycle corresponding to Holy Week is known as 'Tourism Week'

ANTIQUIDITY OF THE CELEBRATION OF HOLY WEEK

From the careful study of the Gospels, particularly Saint John, it can be easily deduced that already in
Apostolic times placed certain emphasis on the remembrance of the last week of mortal life
Jesus Christ.

The dinner in Bethany must have taken place on Saturday, "six days before Passover" (John 12:1-2), and the
The triumphant entry into Jerusalem departed from that place the following morning. We have a fairly good record of it.
detailed account of the words and actions of Christ from that event until the Crucifixion.

But we do not know for certain if that perception of the holiness of those days is something that comes from the
whether it began or not, although it certainly existed by the end of the 4th century in Jerusalem, as the Pilgrimage of
Ætheria contains a very detailed description of the entire week, starting with the ritual in the
"Lazarus" of Bethany on Saturday, during which the account of the anointing of Christ's feet was read. To
the next day, which - in the words of Ætheria - 'marked the beginning of Holy Week, to which here
They call it 'the Great Week', the archdeacon directed a special reminder to the people: 'Throughout the
Next week, starting tomorrow, let us meet at the Martyrium, that is, in the large church, at the ninth hour.

The commemoration of Christ's triumphant entry into the city took place that same afternoon. Large
multitudes, which included very young children to walk, gathered on the Mount of Olives,
where they sang hymns and antiphons and listened to readings, to later return in procession to Jerusalem,
accompanying the bishop and carrying palms and olive branches before him. Special rites are mentioned,
in addition to the daily task, for each of those days.

On Thursday, well into the afternoon, the liturgy was being celebrated; everyone was communing. Right after, the people headed to the
Mount of Olives to commemorate with appropriate readings and hymns the agony and the arrest of
Christ in the garden. They were returning to the city as the morning light began on Friday.

This day also included rituals, among which stands out, before noon, the veneration of the relics of
the true Cross and the sign that had been nailed to it. After that hour, another was performed.
ceremony, which lasted three hours, commemorating the Passion of Christ and in which, according to
narrate Ætheria, the cries and laments of the people surpassed any description. Although there must have been
The younger ones among the faithful and the clergy were keeping vigil that night, tired as they were.

On Saturday, in addition to the ordinary rites held during the day, the great one was celebrated at night.
Easter Vigil, in which the baptism of children and catechumens took place. But this, as Ætheria suggests,
it was already something known in the West.

The description we have just summarized probably belongs to the year 388 and has very high value.
as far as it comes from a pilgrim, a witness who had undoubtedly participated in the rites and the
I had observed carefully.

However, the observance of Holy Week as a special sacred commemoration must be

In the first of his Festal Letters, written in the year 329, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria speaks of the strict
fast that was kept during "those six holy and grand days [before Easter Sunday] that
they symbolize the creation of the world.

He apparently refers to some ancient symbolism that strangely reappears in the Martyrdom.
Anglo-Saxon in the times of King Alfred.

Shortly afterward he writes: 'On the tenth day of Pharmuti we began Holy Week of the great Passover, in
We must observe longer sentences, fasting, and vigilance, so that we can anoint.
our thresholds with the precious blood and escape from the destroyer.

From this and other similar references, e.g., in Saint Chrysostom, the Apostolic Constitutions and others.
sources, including an edict from Constantine, of questionable authenticity, proclaiming that matters
public events should be suspended during Holy Week, it seems likely that by the end of the century
In AD 4, some kind of observance of those six days would have been adopted across the Christian world.
through fasting and prayers.
It is even very likely that a more severe fast preceded that, since Dionysius
from Alexandria (around 260 A.D.) speaks of some people who spent six days without tasting
food

That week was also known as the week of dry fasting (xerophagia), and some of
their customs may have been influenced by an erroneous etymology of the word Pasch, in use
common among the Greeks.

The word Pasch actually comes from a Hebrew word (pesach) that means 'passover' (of the angel)
(destructor), but the Greeks thought it was the same as paschein, to suffer.

SPECIAL CUSTOMS OF HOLY WEEK

We can talk about some of the distinctive liturgical characteristics of Holy Week in our
time. First comes Palm Sunday, and although there is nothing left in our Roman Missal
memory of the dinner in Bethany, nor of the visit to the "Lazarium", in certain ancient Gallic books we
we found that the previous day, Saturday, was known as 'Lazarus Saturday', and that it was the same
Palm Sunday was sometimes called by the Greeks kyriake tou Lazarou (Sunday of Lazarus).

The central event of the ceremony on this day, as it was in the times of Ætheria, was the procession of the
palms. Perhaps the oldest mention of this procession in the West is the one found in the
"Liber Ordinum" español (véase Férotin, "Monumenta Liturgica", V, 179), pero también hay huellas de
similar celebrations in Aldhelm and Bede, as well as in the Bobbio Missal and the Sacramental
Gregorian

All the previous rituals seem to assume that the palms were blessed in a separate place (e.g.,
some promontory or another temple of the same town) and that were carried in procession to the temple
principal, which was entered with a certain ceremony and subsequently the solemn mass was celebrated. It is very
likely, as the Canon Callewaert points out well (Bruges Collations, 1907, 200-212), that this
The ritual will embody a living memory of the practice described by Ætheria in Jerusalem.

Gradually, however, during the Middle Ages the custom began of building a station, at a
short distance, perhaps next to the atrial cross, which was adorned with reliefs of everlasting branches (crux
buxata, from the Latin buxus, an evergreen shrub), and from there the procession continued to the church. The
Customs of each locality modified the details of the ceremonial of that procession.

What did seem to be a constant feature was the singing of the 'Gloria laus', a hymn probably
composed for a similar occasion by Teodulfo of Orleans (around 810 A.D.).

Less common was the custom of carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a portable tabernacle.
The earliest mention of this practice is found among the customs compiled by the archbishop.
Lafranc for the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury.

In Germany and other regions of the European continent, the way to commemorate the entry of Christ was
occasionally in dragging a wooden donkey on wheels (Palmesel) or, in other places, where the
the celebrant himself was riding a donkey.

In England and some parts of France, the veneration of the atrial cross or that of the sanctuary is manifested
with genuflections and prostrations, it became the main element of the rite.

Another custom is to scatter flowers or bundles of willow and yew in front of the procession while it
advanced in the atrium, it ended up being misinterpreted over the years as a simple act of
respect for the dead.

That is why the practice of "flowering the graves" on Palm Sunday is still preserved in many
regions of England and Wales. As for the way to bless the palms, in the current Roman Missal,
and in most of the previous books, something resembling a complete Mass of its own: introit,
collection, gradual, preface and other sentences.

It may not be entirely far-fetched to speculate that this could represent the skeleton of a mass of
consecration that used to be said at the station from which the procession departed.

But this stance does not have much positive evidence to support it and has been debated.

It is likely that originally the palms were only blessed for the purpose of the procession, but the
the last form of blessing seems to clearly suggest that the palms should be kept as
sacramentals and covers carried by the faithful.

The only other remarkable feature of the current Palm Sunday is the reading of the Gospel of the
Passion.

Just like Good Friday, and Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, whenever mass is celebrated.
Solemnly, the Passion is sung by three deacons who represent, respectively, the evangelist.
(cronista), to Jesus Christ and to the other interlocutors (synagogue).

This division of the Passion among three characters is something very ancient, and it is often indicated with
red letters in the manuscripts of the Gospel. One of those manuscripts, in Durham, which only includes
two readers, it cannot be from a period later than the 8th century.

In earlier times, other activities surrounded Palm Sunday, among which the following stand out:
scrutinies of the catechumens (see CATECHUMEN, III, 431) and a certain relaxation of penance, for
which is sometimes called Dominica indulgentiae.