Is Holy Week a Festival?
The week leading up to Easter Sunday is known as Holy Week, and it begins seven days before Easter Sunday with Palm Sunday.
It all comes to a close on Holy Saturday. Easter is not part of Holy Week, but rather the start of the Liturgical year’s Easter season.
Palm Sunday kicks up Holy Week. On this day, people commemorate Jesus Christ’s victorious entry into Jerusalem on a donkey.
On that day, the people presented Him with palms, a custom reserved for victorious leaders. At Mass, palms are distributed to the faithful, who may keep them for a period of time to use as devotional items.
At Mass, the palms are blessed. Palm fronds are sometimes fashioned into crosses by the pious.
These palms are eventually returned to the Church, where they are burned. Their ashes are stored and distributed at the next year’s Ash Wednesday rituals, according to tradition.
When Jesus returned to the Temple, he was furious with the money changers who had transformed the Temple court into a place of business rather than devotion.
After the court had been cleaned, Jesus began to instruct the people. Meanwhile, His foes devised strategies to assassinate Him.
Holy Thursday is the next important event in Holy Week. Jesus and the disciples celebrated the Passover feast on this day. The Last Supper is the name given to this event. This is the night He was arrested after being betrayed by Judas.
