Holy Week, or Passion Week, is the name given to the last week before Pascha, dedicated to the remembrance of the final days of the earthly life of the Savior, of His sufferings, crucifixion, death on the Cross, and burial. This week is especially revered by the Church.
“All days,” says the Synaxarion, “are surpassed by the holy and great Forty Days, but greater than the holy Forty Days is the Holy and Great Week (Passion Week), and greater than the Great Week itself is Great and Holy Saturday. It is called Great not because its days or hours are longer (than others), but because in this week great and supernatural miracles and extraordinary deeds of our Savior were accomplished…”
According to the testimony of St. John Chrysostom, the first Christians, burning with the desire to remain inseparably with the Lord in the last days of His life, intensified their prayers and increased their usual ascetic labors of fasting during Passion Week. Imitating the Lord, Who endured sufferings unparalleled in love for fallen humanity, they strove to be kind and condescending to the infirmities of their brethren and to perform more works of mercy, considering it unseemly to pronounce condemnation in the days of our justification by the blood of the Immaculate Lamb; they ceased all lawsuits, trials, disputes, punishments, and even freed prisoners in dungeons—those imprisoned for non-criminal offenses—from their chains for this time.
Every day of Passion Week is great and holy, and on each of these days there are special services in all churches. The divine services of Passion Week are especially majestic, adorned with wisely arranged prophetic, apostolic, and Gospel readings, most exalted and inspired hymns, and a whole series of deeply significant and reverent rites. Everything that in the Old Testament was only prefigured or foretold about the last days and hours of the earthly life of the God-Man, the Holy Church gathers into one majestic image that gradually unfolds before us in the divine services of Passion Week. Recalling in the divine services the events of the last days of the earthly life of the Savior, the Holy Church follows with the attentive eye of love and reverence every step, listens to every word of Christ the Savior going to His voluntary Passion, and gradually leads us along the way of the Cross of the Lord to the bright triumph of Christ’s Resurrection.
The first three days of this week are dedicated to intensified preparation for the Passion of Christ. In accordance with the fact that Jesus Christ spent all the days before His sufferings in the temple, teaching the people, the Holy Church distinguishes these days by especially prolonged divine services. Striving to gather and concentrate the attention and thoughts of the faithful on the whole Gospel history of the Incarnation of the God-Man and His ministry to the human race, the Holy Church on the first three days of Passion Week reads the entire Four Gospels at the Hours. The conversations of Jesus Christ after His entry into Jerusalem, addressed now to the disciples, now to the scribes and Pharisees, are developed and unfold in all the hymns of the first three days of Passion Week. Since various significant events took place on the first three days of Passion Week that have the closest relation to the Passion of Christ, these events are reverently commemorated by the Holy Church on the very days on which they occurred. Thus the Holy Church in these days leads us inseparably after the Divine Teacher, with His disciples, now into the temple, now to the people, now to the publicans, now to the Pharisees, and everywhere enlightens us with precisely those words that He Himself offered to His listeners on these days.
Preparing the faithful for the Cross-bearing sufferings of the Savior, the Holy Church gives the divine services of the first three days of Passion Week a character of sorrow and contrition over our sinfulness. The Lenten divine service conclude on Wednesday evening; in the Church hymns, the sounds of the weeping and lamentation of the sinful human soul fall silent, and days of another weeping begin that pierce the whole divine service—the weeping that comes from the contemplation of the horrifying torments and Cross-bearing sufferings of the Son of God Himself. At the same time other feelings—indescribable joy for our salvation and boundless gratitude to the Divine Redeemer—fill the soul of the believing Christian. Lamenting the Innocent Sufferer, the Mocked and Crucified One, shedding bitter tears beneath the Cross of our Savior, we also experience inexpressible joy from the awareness that the One crucified on the Cross will resurrect us, the perishing, together with Himself.
Attending the church services during Passion Week, which present all the events of the last days of the Savior as if taking place before our eyes, we mentally pass through the entire majestically touching and immeasurably edifying history of the sufferings of Christ. With our minds and hearts we “journey with Him and are crucified with Him.” The Holy Church calls us this week to leave behind all that is vain and worldly, and to follow after our Savior. The fathers of the Church so composed and arranged the divine services of Passion Week that all the sufferings of Christ are reflected in them. The temple in these days alternately represents now the Upper Room of Zion and Gethsemane, now Golgotha. The divine services of Passion Week the Holy Church has surrounded with special outward majesty, exalted and inspired hymns, and a whole series of deeply significant rites that are performed only in this week. Therefore whoever remains constantly in the temple for the divine services on these days visibly walks after the Lord as He goes to His sufferings.
On each of these three days the Gospel is read at all the services; all four Gospels are to be read. But whoever is able should without fail read these passages from the Gospel at home both for himself and for others. The indication of what to read can be found in the church calendar. Because of the large amount read, much may escape one’s attention when listening in church, whereas home reading allows one to follow after the Lord with all one’s thoughts and feelings. With attentive reading of the Gospels the sufferings of Christ come alive and fill the soul with inexpressible tenderness… Therefore, while reading the Gospel, one involuntarily finds oneself transported in mind to the place of the events, takes part in what is happening, walks after the Savior and suffers with Him. Reverent reflection on His sufferings is also necessary. Without this reflection, little fruit will be borne from our presence in the temple, our hearing, or reading of the Gospel. But what does it mean to reflect on the sufferings of Christ, and how should one reflect? First of all, picture in your mind the sufferings of the Savior as vividly as possible, at least in their main features—for example: how He was betrayed, tried, and condemned; how He carried the Cross and was lifted up on the Cross; how He cried out to the Father in Gethsemane and on Golgotha and gave up His spirit to Him; how He was taken down from the Cross and buried… Then ask yourself: for what reason and for what purpose did He endure so many sufferings—He Who had no sin and Who, as the Son of God, could always abide in glory and blessedness? And ask yourself further: what is required of me so that the death of the Savior may not remain fruitless for me; what must I do in order truly to partake of the salvation acquired on Golgotha for the whole world? The Church teaches that this requires the assimilation by the mind and heart of the whole teaching of Christ, the fulfillment of the Lord’s commandments, repentance, and imitation of Christ in a good life. After this, your conscience itself will answer as to whether you are doing this… Such reflection (and who is not capable of it?) amazingly quickly brings the sinner close to his Savior, binds him closely and forever with the bond of love to His Cross, and powerfully and vividly introduces him into participation in what is happening on Golgotha.
The path of Passion Week is the path of fasting, confession, and Communion—in other words, preparation for worthy Communion of the Holy Mysteries in these great days. And how can one not prepare in these days, when the Bridegroom of our souls is taken away (Matt. 9:15), when He Himself hungers at the barren fig tree and thirsts on the Cross? Where else should one lay down the burden of sins by means of confession if not at the foot of the Cross? At what time is it better to partake of the Cup of life than in the coming days, when it is given to us, one might say, from the hands of the Lord Himself? Truly, whoever has the opportunity to approach the Holy Table in these days but turns away from it turns away from the Lord and flees from his Savior. The way of Passion Week is the way of rendering, in His name, help to the poor, the sick, and the suffering. This path may seem distant and indirect, but in reality it is extremely close, convenient, and direct. Our Savior is so full of love that everything we do in His name for the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the suffering He takes to personally Himself. At His Dread Judgment He will especially require of us works of mercy toward our neighbor, and our justification or condemnation will be based on them. Remembering this, never neglect the precious opportunity to alleviate the sufferings of the Lord in His lesser brethren, and especially make use of it in the days of Passion Week—for example, by clothing one who is in need you will act as Joseph did when he provided the burial shroud. Here is the main thing, accessible to everyone, with which an Orthodox Christian in Passion Week can follow the Lord, Who is going to His sufferings.
From: Readings For Every Day of Great Lent, Ed. N. Shaposhnikova (Moscow: Danilov Monastery, 2025).
