“Holy Week” or “Passion Week” is how we remember the last week in Jesus’ life, from his Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem (from Jericho) and all the events that led to his crucifixion and resurrection on Easter Sunday. These events are incredibly important for Christian faith and also changed the shape of human history. On this page we share resources to pray during Holy Week.
Prayer is not just an act of piety. It is something Jesus did regularly and it’s probably the most human thing we can do to process, understand, struggle with, accept and receive the deep truths that were revealed during Holy Week.
Use the Podcast
One way to pray during Holy Week is using our First Fifteen podcast and Matthew’s gospel as explained in this post.
Thematic Prayer
Another way to pray is to approach the week thematically. This is what we do in a separate article called “Walking a Week with Jesus: Prayers for Holy Week”, which comes as a free bonus with Book 4 of Journey with Jesus. (if you’ve bought book 4 and don’t have the bonus, let me know)
Re-live Holy Week from the Gospels
Yet another way is to read all four gospels and to re-construct the events from Holy Week as best we can. A really helpful resource for that is this infographic.
To get a printable pdf, download it here. If you want to read more about how to read this timeline, you can get details at this post. The infographic basically lets you track what happens (23 events), by or with whom (13 colors) and where (7 major places and others noted) along with references in each of the four gospels.
A large portion of each gospel is devoted to Holy Week: Matthew 21-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24, and John 12-20. My suggestion is to pick one gospel and pray through the continuous narrative of that particular gospel for any given Holy Week.
The main thing is to pick a method, either one of these or come up with your own, but pray through the entire experience of Holy Week and listen to God speak to you through what you hear. I would enjoy hearing what you learn or experience!