Passion Week

Passion Week (also called Holy Week) is my favorite time of the church year.  It is the culmination of Lent (a season of penitence) in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, institution of the Lord's Supper, betrayal, suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  Out of habit mostly, I prefer "Resurrection Day" to "Easter", but that's more of a personal preference than anything else.

Around the Word Journal, edited by my own Pastor, Bryan Wolfmueller, assembled an excellent resource for the chronology of Passion Week and Easter with readings for all the events.

Our celebration of Passion Week looks something like this:

• Palm Sunday (triumphal entry into Jerusalem)
• Annunciation of Our Lord (not normally a part of Passion Week, but because of when it falls this year, yesterday--25 March--is the Annunciation of Our Lord)
• Maundy Thursday (institution of the Lord's Supper and betrayal of Jesus--"maundy" comes from the Latin word "mandatum", from where we get our word "mandate", indicating a new mandate or command given by Christ; in the Vulgate, the first word in John 13:34 is "mandatum")
• Good Friday (suffering, death and burial--often celebrated with a Tenebrae service, and probably my favorite of the church year)
• Holy Saturday
• Resurrection Day (or Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus)

A thought that I've had lately... one of the ways that non-Christians like to try and play "gotcha" with this is that we say Jesus died and was buried, then rose on the third day.  They say that the math just doesn't work there if He died on Friday and rose on Sunday.  The way the Jewish day works is from sundown to sundown.  Sundown Thursday-sundown Friday is day 1 (Jesus is crucified), sundown Friday-sundown Saturday is day 2, and sundown Saturday-sundown Sunday is day 3 (Jesus is risen).  Easy math.