What is Holy Week?
Holy Week 2016 is the final week before Easter 2016 and the last week of Lent 2016.
Answer: Holy Week, which commemorates the Passion of Christ, begins on Palm Sunday 2016, which falls on March 20, 2016, and includes Holy Thursday 2016 and Good Friday 2016. Holy Week 2016 ends on Holy Saturday 2016, which falls on March 26, 2016.
Palm Sunday commemorates the triumphal entrance of Christ into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–9), when palm branches were placed in His path, before His arrest on Holy Thursday and His Crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent, and the week in which Christians celebrate the mystery of their salvation through Christ’s Death and His Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
-I know why Holy Thursday is called Maundy Thursday, but why is the day before called Spy Wednesday?
That’s a great question! Many Catholics, on hearing the name Spy Wednesday, assume that Spy must be a corruption or abbreviation of a Latin word. That’s a reasonable assumption: After all, the Maundy in Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) is an anglicization (by way of Old French) of the Latin mandatum(“mandate” or “command”), referring to Christ’s commandment to His disciples at the Last Supper in John 13:34 (“A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you”).
Likewise, the Ember in Ember Days has nothing to do with fire but comes from the Latin phrase Quatuor Tempora (“four times”), since the Ember Days are celebrated four times per year.
Judas Betrayed
But in the case of Spy Wednesday, the word means exactly what we think it means. It’s a reference to Judas’s action in Matthew 26: 14–16:
Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, and said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver. And from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray him.
The beginning of Matthew 26 seems to place that event two days before Good Friday. Thus, a spy entered the midst of the disciples on Wednesday of Holy Week, when Judas resolved to betray our Lord for 30 pieces of silver.
Holy Thursday is the day on which Christ celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, four days after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Only hours after the Last Supper,Judas would betray Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, setting the stage for Christ’s Crucifixion on Good Friday.
Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday, commemorates the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. Good Friday is the second day of the Easter Triduum, the period from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday.
Holy Saturday is the final day of Lent, of Holy Week, and of theEaster Triduum, the three days (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday) immediately preceding Easter, during which Christians commemorate the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ and prepare for His Resurrection.
