What happened during Holy Week?

Mark’s calendar

The Gospels slow down when they reach Jerusalem. Mark spends six of his sixteen chapters on a single week, so much that the German theologian Martin Kähler called the Gospels “passion narratives with extended introductions” (1892). Mark also gives the week its frame. He counts the days: “the next day” (Mark 11:12), “in the morning” (11:20), “two days before the Passover” (14:1). And he shows the rhythm. By day Jesus is in the Temple courts; at night he walks back over the Mount of Olives.

Jesus entered into the temple in Jerusalem. When he had looked around at everything, it being now evening, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Day by day

• Sunday. He rides down from Bethphage on a young donkey while pilgrims spread cloaks and branches and shout “Hosanna” (Mark 11:1–11). See why it is called Palm Sunday.
• Monday. On the road he curses a barren fig tree. In the Temple he overturns the money changers’ tables: “a den of robbers” (11:12–19).
• Tuesday. The longest day in Mark. The fig tree has withered. Questions come at him: by what authority, taxes to Caesar, the resurrection, the greatest commandment. He praises a widow’s two small coins and, on the Mount of Olives, foretells the Temple’s fall (11:20–13:37).
• Wednesday. The chief priests look for a quiet arrest, a woman pours perfume on his head at Bethany, and Judas goes to the chief priests (14:1–11). The reasons are weighed in why Judas betrayed Jesus.
• Thursday. The supper in an upper room, the bread and the cup, the prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest by torchlight (14:12–52). See Maundy Thursday and how they ate.
• Friday. A night hearing before the high priest, Peter’s three denials, Pilate at dawn. Crucified at the third hour, dead at the ninth, buried before sunset (14:53–15:47). The hours are in what day Jesus died.
• Saturday. The Sabbath. The women rest, and the tomb is sealed and guarded (Luke 23:56; Matthew 27:62–66).
• Sunday. At dawn women find the stone rolled back (Mark 16:1–8). See who found the empty tomb.

Not every day is certain. Mark’s Tuesday and Wednesday run together, and the Wednesday plot is dated only by his “two days before the Passover.” Tradition fixed the rest.

Where the Gospels differ

The other Gospels tell the same week with different furniture. Matthew and Luke put the scene with the money changers on Sunday, straight after the entry (Matthew 21:12; Luke 19:45). John sets it at the start of the ministry, years earlier (John 2:13–17). John also has Jesus reach Bethany “six days before the Passover” and be anointed there at supper before he enters the city (John 12:1–12), and he places the last meal the day before the Passover, a puzzle of its own: was the Last Supper a Passover meal? Churches follow Mark’s calendar, with John’s foot washing on Thursday and his palms on Sunday.

From history to liturgy

Jerusalem’s Christians were already walking the week at its own places in the 380s, when a pilgrim named Egeria described it in a travel diary. On Sunday afternoon the bishop and the people came down the Mount of Olives on foot, the children carrying branches, singing “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Then the week took names. In English: Palm Sunday, Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, sometimes called Fig Tuesday, Spy Wednesday for the day Judas turned informer, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter. The last three days, from Thursday evening to Sunday, are the Easter Triduum, kept as one long feast.