Holy Week (Biblical)

In the Western church, Holy Week is not a separate season but a part of Lent. In the Eastern church, Holy Week is a season to itself. Holy Week commemorates the final events that led to the death of Jesus. The Passion of Christ The term passion, from the Latin passus, refers to the suffering of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. This suffering was not only physical, but also spiritual in that Jesus was rejected by those unfaithful to the covenant. The Gospels record his agony in prayer in Gethsemane prior to his arrest; Luke writes graphically of his sweat falling to the ground "like drops of blood" (Luke 22:44) as he wrestled in the spirit with the issue of his own death. The "cup" he was asking the Father to remove from him was not simply physical pain but the just and deadly penalty for violation of the covenant-a curse he was to bear on the cross (Gal. 3:10) in order to cancel the sanctions of the old covenant and introduce the life of the new. It is perhaps this struggle in …