Living Holy Week Liturgically
With intriguing names like Spy Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, and liturgical rituals like the Veneration of the Cross and the stripping of the Altar, Holy Week can be chock-full of opportunities to prayerfully and deeply commemorate the last days of Jesus’ ministry on Earth, and His Passion and death.
During Holy Week, the Church, in Her perennial wisdom, offers many liturgies, services and rituals for Her people to observe. Making a plan now, before it arrives, for how you will celebrate Holy Week will ensure you and your family are prepared. You can then make the most of your final week of Lent before joyfully celebrating Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Let’s start at the beginning of the week and work our way towards Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil.
PALM SUNDAY
On this day, the people hail Jesus as King. The people laid palm branches on the ground for his procession through the streets of Jerusalem.
Celebrate this day with Mass & Palm Weaving
At mass there is a procession and the distribution of blessed palm leaves – a symbol of peace and victory.
St Martha’s Guild series of Palm Weaving tutorials.
We can wear a small palm cross on our coats or clothing throughout Holy Week. This will remind us to patiently carry our cross and share in Christ’s Easter victory.
MONDAY – WEDNESDAY
Spring Cleaning – According to ancient tradition, the three days after Palm Sunday are devoted to the most vigorous cleaning of the home of the whole year.
Pretzels for Lent – At CatholicAllYear.com, Kendra Tierney Norton, newly remarried mother of a blended family of 14 children and promoter of spreading the faith by living the liturgical calendar with the family, bakes pretzels with her children. The woven dough resembles arms crossed in prayer, a practice encouraged all through Lent.
SPY WEDNESDAY
This is the day that one of Jesus’s chosen 12 apostles, Judas Iscariot, betrays Him for 30 pieces of silver. (Luke 22:6) Judas was acting as a ‘spy’ for the high priests and Temple guard, thus the name.
Genie, from BarefootAbbey.com, shares her family tradition of a scavenger hunt. She hides Holy Week books and 30 silver coins for her children to find. They also make silver dollar pancakes for dinner on Spy Wednesday.
Barefoot Abbey Spy Wednesday at Home
MAUNDY THURSDAY
Maundy Thursday is the first day of the Holy Triduum, the three most sacred days of the liturgical year, marking the end of Lent.
Go to Mass and Adoration
Holy Thursday is the commemoration of the Last Supper, the meal at which Christ instituted the Eucharist, the Mass, and the priesthood (Luke 22:19). Maundy comes from the word “commandment.” At the Last Supper, Christ gave the apostles the new commandment to “love one another.” (John 13:34)
Throughout this mass the priest performs many symbolic actions. Discuss these with your children beforehand, so they are on the lookout for them. Then stay for adoration to show your intention to never abandon Jesus.
To model Christ’s actions, the priest will wash the feet of a few of his parishioners. After the mass, they remove the Blessed Sacrament from the main tabernacle and place it in an “Altar of Repose” or secondary tabernacle, for Adoration. This commemorates the apostles praying with Jesus through the night on the Mount of Olives. The altar and sanctuary are then stripped bare, symbolizing how Jesus was abandoned by his disciples and later stripped before His crucifixion. The crucifix is veiled with purple cloth and candles are snuffed out.
Watch a Video
On Formed.org, the Brother Francis video series offers The Bread of Life: Celebrating the Eucharist for younger kids. Most parishes offer a subscription for Formed – ask your parish office!
Bake Bread
Fresh bread can be a reminder of Christ truly present in the Eucharist. Use your bread maker, make an easy recipe of Irish Soda bread, or pop open a tube of Pillsbury French Bread – it all smells heavenly!
GOOD FRIDAY
Good Friday is a solemn day of fasting, abstaining from eating meat, and prayerful reflection. It is the only day of the year the Church offers no daily mass. Instead, there is the service of the Veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion. To show reverence to the cross, the people process to the altar and will either kiss the offered crucifix or genuflect before it.
At home, the family can go about the day as quietly as possible. When her children were young, CCL’s US and International Program Manager, Alejandra Martinez, would encourage silence and quiet activities from 12 to 3 PM, the hours in which Jesus hung on the cross before giving up His spirit to His Father in Heaven. (Luke 23:46)
In Around the Year with the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta Trapp describes how her family would have a “very quiet day” with rigorous fasting observed with no breakfast and a soup lunch eaten standing up in silence at a bare table.
“From twelve until three, the hours of Our Lord’s agony on the cross, all activity stops. We sit together in the empty chapel before the cross and spend these hours in prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading.”
Maria Augusta Trapp
HOLY SATURDAY
Holy Saturday is a day of preparation for Easter. Many families have a tradition of making Easter eggs, a symbol of new life, or preparing a basket of their Easter foods to be blessed by the priest at mass.
Make Easter Story Cookies
Each step of the recipe for Easter Story Cookies includes a scripture reading that symbolizes the experiences of Jesus’ Passion.
Attend the Easter Vigil – This is the dramatic liturgy that marks the beginning of Easter. Every Catholic, young and old, should attempt to attend the Vigil mass. As explained on CatholicCulture.com, the vigil is divided into four parts: Service of Light, Liturgy of the Word, Liturgy of Baptism, and Liturgy of the Eucharist. Each part is unique and should be explained to the younger children so they are prepared.
CCL Executive Director, Katie Zulanas shares that after the Easter Vigil her family joined their friends and ate a late night Easter breakfast. Her adult children now fondly remember it as a “special breakfast.”
Holy Week is a time devoted to a special commemoration of Christ’s Passion and death. Families can join in living this solemn week with activities at home that follow the progression of the week’s liturgies. These liturgies and activities in the home allows us to enter more fully into the most holy week of the Catholic Church’s liturgical year.
Written by Martha Haenni, CCL Staff. Find a parish near you to experience the beauty of this most sacred week. The Catholic Mass Times app is a helpful tool.