Holy Week

 

Holy Week is dedicated to the remembrance of the last days of the Savior's earthly life, His suffering on the Cross, death and burial. Due to the greatness and importance of the events, every day of this week is called holy and great. Therefore, in these days, neither memory of saints nor remembrance of the departed is performed. The church encourages believers to take spiritual participation in the services performed and to become partakers of sacred memories.

From the apostolic times, the days of Holy Week were in deep esteem among Christians. Believers spent the Passion Week in the strictest abstinence, zealous prayer, in the deeds of virtue and mercy.

All the services of Holy Week, distinguished by the depth of pious emotions, contemplation, special touch and duration, are arranged so that in them the history of the sufferings of the Savior, His last divine instruction, is alive and gradually reproduced. Every day of the week a special memory is learned, expressed in hymns and gospel readings of Matins and Liturgy.

Participating in the sufferings of the Savior, "conforming to his death" (Philippians 3, 10), the Holy Church in this week takes a sad image: sacred objects in temples (throne, altar, etc.) and the clergymen themselves dress in dark clothes and worship takes place predominantly in a sad nature, the Passion of Christ. In modern liturgical practice, they usually perform Lenten worship in black vestments, replacing them with bright ones on the Great Sabbath. In some monasteries and temples the service is performed, according to more ancient practice, in purple vestments, and in Passion Week - in scarlet - burgundy, the color of blood - in remembrance of the sufferings on the Cross for the salvation of the world of the Savior's Blood.

On Great Monday the Church in its hymns invites you to meet the beginning of the Passion of Christ. In the service of Monday the Old Testament patriarch Joseph is remembered, sold out of envy by his brothers to Egypt, who represented the sufferings of the Savior. In addition, on this day is remembered the withering by the Lord a barren fig tree serving as image hypocritical scribes and Pharisees. in spite of their external piety, the Lord did not find the good fruits of faith and piety, but only the hypocritical shadow of the Law. Any soul which isn't bearing spiritual fruits — true repentance, belief, a prayer and good deeds is similar to the fruitless, dried-up fig.

On Great Tuesday, the Lord's revelation of the scribes and Pharisees is remembered, His conversations and parables, spoken by Him this day in the Temple of Jerusalem: about the tribute to Caesar, about the resurrection of the dead, The Last Judgment, the Ten Virgins and Talents.

On Great Wednesday, we commemorate the woman that was a sinner, who annointed Christ's feet as He sat in the house of Simon the leper and thereby prepared Christ for burial. Also the betrayal of Judas is commemorated. Judas perished, not simply because he betrayed his Master, but because, having fallen into the sin of betrayal, he then refused to believe in the possibility of forgiveness.

On Holy Thursday, the four most important evangelical events that took place on that day are remembered in the service: The Last Supper, in which the Lord instituted the New Testament sacrament of Holy Communion (Eucharist), the Lord's washing of His disciples' feet as a sign of profound humility and love for them, the Savior's prayer in the garden Gethsemane and the treachery of Judah.