In both the one-year and three-year lectionaries, Holy Week is a distinct period of transition within the final days of Lent. More than simply an intensification of the Lenten penitential discipline, it is shaped and governed by a different though related set of concerns and purposes. Whereas Lent as a whole is chiefly catechetical and aims especially at the significance of Holy Baptism, Holy Week focuses the Church’s attention on the Cross and Passion of her Lord as the first priority, and on the Sacrament of the Altar in its close connection to His Cross and Passion.
The transition from Lent into Holy Week is marked by the use of scarlet (crimson or oxblood), in preference to violet, from Palm Sunday until Maundy Thursday. Such a deep, dark shade of red signifies the precious Blood of Christ, once shed upon the Cross for the redemption of all people, now poured out in the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of sins. Holy Week also has its own Proper Preface and (in the three-year series) its own Gradual, substantiating its distinctive focus on the Cross and Passion of our Lord and on the New Testament in His Blood.
As He accomplished salvation “by the Tree of the Cross” (LSB Altar Book, p. 231), so does He distribute “the promised eternal inheritance” with the fruits of that Tree, His Body and Blood, in the Holy Supper (LSB Altar Book, p. 586). Together, these divine mysteries of our Lord constitute the special emphases of Holy Week. This dual focus on the Passion and the Sacrament is evident, not only in the proximity and close connection between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but in the way the narrative of the Lord’s Supper figures prominently at the beginning of the Passion accounts from St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. The Sacrament interprets the Passion, and the Cross and Passion of our Lord fills His Supper.
As a general rule, Holy Week is marked by sober simplicity, quiet reverence, and a fasting from the Church’s usual rejoicing. A number of the customary ceremonies of Holy Week have already begun with Passiontide in the historic one-year series, but they commence with the Sunday of the Passion in the three-year series. Most prominent among those ceremonies is the veiling of crosses and the omission of the Gloria Patri. The Church’s music generally exhibits considerable restraint during this week, as well, though the richness of expression is evident, as for example in traditional choral settings of the Passion narratives, exemplified most fully in the Passion settings of Johann Sebastian Bach.
As traditional as Holy Week is, some of its customs may seem odd or confusing. And to be sure, their intention and significance cannot be discerned without grasping the underlying spirit of these sacred days. It needs to be understood that the entire week, precisely in its focus on the Passion of our Lord, is kept in the confidence and expectation of His Paschal Feast. What is more, all of the fasting and prayers of Holy Week are undertaken in the remembrance of His Cross and in the hope of His Resurrection.
In much the way that Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and sets the tone of that holy season, so does the Sunday of the Passion (Palm Sunday) mark the beginning and set the tone of Holy Week. As a Sunday, it is a festival in its own right, but its focus on the Passion of our Lord establishes a solemn and serious ambience for the days that follow. The day has taken its popular name, “Palm Sunday,” from the Procession of Palms (Palmarum) with which the Divine Service begins. In contrast to the Holy Gospel of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the First Sunday in Advent, which sets the tone for the coming of our Lord throughout the liturgical year, the parallel account from St. John 12:12-19 here points to the culmination of His coming in the flesh and to the fulfillment of His purpose in the Hour of His Cross and Passion, “when Jesus was glorified” (St. John 12:16).
With his disciples then, the congregation now follows the Lord Jesus into His Holy City, where He will be handed over to His voluntary suffering and death for the sins of the world. This same Holy Gospel also foreshadows His entry into the heavenly City, New Jerusalem, by the way of His Cross and Passion, Resurrection and Ascension (Ps. 24:7–10; St. John 14:1–4; 20:17). The cries of “Hosanna!” to “the King of Israel” (St. John 12:13) are thus fulfilled in the Hour of His Cross. For “God the nations’ King should be / And reign in triumph from the tree” (LSB 455, st. 3). It is therefore to the Passion of our Lord that the Procession of Palms points and leads, both historically and theologically, and so also liturgically.
(These comments on the observances of Holy Week are excerpted and redacted from my chapter on the Church Year and Lectionary in the LSB Companion to the Services, CPH, 2022.)