Holy Week 2024
by Michael H. Cox
March 24 – March 31, 2024 is Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, and is one of the most sacred and holy times of the year, as we remember the teachings, atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ during the last week of His mortal life.
We invite you to take a few minutes each day this week to learn more about Jesus and what He did the last week of His life. While we can’t be sure exactly what happened on each day of Holy Week, we can learn from the example Jesus Christ set throughout His whole ministry. You can also learn more about Holy Week on the Church website.
| Palm Sunday | Holy Monday | Holy Tuesday |
| Spy Wednesday | Maundy Thursday / Passover |
| Good Friday | Silent Saturday | Easter Sunday |
Sunday, March 24th is day one of Holy Week and is known as Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday we
remember the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for the joy the people had in seeing Him, Jesus remarked that if the people didn’t worship Him the stones on the ground would shout in joy because they saw Him. Today let us be joyful that we can worship the Lord Jesus Christ as we participate in the dedication of the Red Cliffs Utah Temple.
Let us strive each day of Holy Week and beyond to remember Jesus and rejoice in Him and His atoning sacrifice.
Read Matthew 21:1-11 and Luke 19:28-40 and then watch The Lord’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem video.
Monday, March 25th, is day two of the Holy Week and is known as Holy Monday. On Holy Monday Jesus
Christ cleansed the temple . Remember that the temple is the House of God. Yesterday we had the opportunity to participate in the dedication of the Red Cliffs Utah Temple. As the Daughters and Sons of God all of us have the privilege to become a temple of God by letting the Holy Ghost dwell within us. Everything that God does, all of His creation, was because of us and His love for us! We have with in us the potential to become like Him.
Let us strive each day of Holy Week and beyond to cleanse ourselves from sin and weakness so that we are worthily to enter God’s Holy Temple and keep our body’s clean and pure so the Holy Ghost can dwell with in us. When we fall short, as all of us will, repent and rely on the atonement of Jesus, because His grace is sufficient.
Read Mark 11:15-19 and 1 Corinthians 3:16 and then watch Jesus Cleanses the Temple video.
Tuesday, March 26th, is day three of Holy Week and is usually referred to as Holy Tuesday or Teaching Tuesday.
Jesus taught much on this day. Continuing His lesson on our individual potential He walked passed the Withered Fig Tree, encouraging His disciples to also increase their faith. He teaches them that if they have the faith of a mustard seed they could do great things, for example telling mountains to move. While the time could happen when we will need to physically move mountains with our faith usually we will need our faith to move spiritual mountains that is attempting to block our way, or the way of those we love, on the covenant path. If we simply have faith all things are possible for us.
Jesus then returned to the Temple teaching all who would listen. His authority is challenged. While those leaders doubted He was the Messiah you can know for yourself that He came to the earth and suffered for all that we can be forgiven and return to live with God.
He also taught about the importance of love when He taught the greatest commandment to love God and the second is to love our neighbor as ourself.
Let us strive each day of Holy Week and beyond to increase our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is action and we will show our faith in Jesus by our actions.
Read Matthew 21:18-27, Mark 11:20-25, 27-33, Luke 20:1-8, and 1 Nephi 15:8-9, 11
Wednesday, March 27th, is day four of Holy Week, often referred to as “Holy Wednesday” or “Spy Wednesday”.
Have you ever had someone betray your trust? Ever felt the pain and sorry caused by a friendship lost? While Jesus was teaching, one of His apostles went to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
Even though Jesus knew He was to be betrayed this pain and sorrow must have been difficult. The betrayal of Jesus is a reminder that even during pain and sorrow, there is hope. Jesus forgave Judas and all those who betrayed Him, and He wants us to do the same.
Think of those who we need to forgive for betraying, cheating, and offending us, and seek forgiveness for the times when we have betrayed, cheated, and offended others. Try to make today a holy day in your life by mending these relationships. Think also of those in your life whom you can tell them about how much Jesus loves them.
Read Matthew 26:14-16 and Doctrine & Covenants 18:10,13-15
Thursday, March 28th, is day five of Holy Week, when Jesus celebrated the Passover, and is sometimes referred to as Maundy Thursday.
The Passover celebration was to remind the people how the Destroying Angel “passed over” their house, saving their first born, while the Egyptians, to whom they were in captivity to, had their first born slain, which lead to the people being freed from their bonds. This was a parallel to all of us – we are in captivity to our sins and in bondage to our weaknesses. God’s first born, the Lord Jesus, was to be slain, to free us.
Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover together at what we typically call The Last Supper. During The Last Supper Jesus introduces the Sacrament.
He also washes the feet of the disciples, showing us that we should love and serve others. Jesus then gives a new commandment, to love one another, as well letting them know that the world will recognize the followers of Jesus by seeing how they love everyone. (See John 13:34-35).
“Maundy” comes from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment, reflecting Jesus’ words “I give you a new commandment, leading to one of the nicknames for Thursday.
Judas leaves to complete his betrayal of Jesus.
After more teaching, Jesus and the other disciples went to the Mount of Olives into the garden of Gethsemane, where He gives the great Intercessory Prayer and begins the atonement where “sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44) as He begins to pay the price for all our sins. This will be concluded at Calvary on Good Friday.
Let us strive each day of Holy Week and beyond to love and service others, on both sides of the veil, allowing us to, in a small way, better understand the great atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
Read Matthew 26:17-28, Mark 14:12-24, Luke 22:7-16, 19-20, John 13:1, 4-17 and 3 Nephi 20:3-5, 8-9 and then watch The Last Supper video.
Friday, March 29th, is day six of Holy Week and is better known as Good Friday.
As noted above and as you may have noticed in your gospel study the four Gospel authors do not always 100% agree on a timeline. The Jewish Day ran from sunup to sundown and so their time references are harder for us to understand. A few years ago I attempted to convert Good Friday into a more recognizable western time of day.
11 pm Thursday – the atonement in Gethsemane. His closest friends falls asleep while He “sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44) as He begins to pay the price for all our sins. This will be concluded at Calvary.
1 am Friday – Judas kisses the Lord, as a sign to betray Him to the Temple guards.
1:15 am – Jesus is arrested, Peter cuts the ear off the High Priests servant. Jesus heals the ear.
1:30 am – as Jesus is being lead away by the Temple guards the disciples flee.
2:00 am – Jesus goes before Annas, father-in-law to High Priest Caiaphas.
2:15 am – Peter denies knowing Jesus.
3:00 am – Jesus goes before High Priest Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin counsel in an illegal trial, who declares that Jesus is a Blasphemer and thus should be killed.
3:15 am – Peter denies knowing Jesus a 2nd time.
4:00 am – Jesus put in prison
5:15 am – Peter denies knowing Jesus a 3rd time / the rooster then crows. Peter, realizing what he did, begins to cry.
5:30 am – Jesus mocked and blasphemous thinks spoken by those holding Him in prison.
6:00 am – Jesus taken before Pilate for questioning.
7:00 am – Jesus taken before Herod for questioning.
8:00 am – Jesus taken again before Pilate for questioning. Pilate offers to release “Jesus called Christ” or Barabbas. Crowd demands Barabbas released and Jesus killed.
8:15 am – Jesus is beaten by order of Pilate.
9:00 am – solders put a crown of thorns on Jesus’s head and then they mock Him.
9:15 am – Pilate presents the now beaten Jesus to the crowd. “Behold your king!” (John 19:14). The crowds of Jerusalem who, just a few days ago were shouting “blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9) and “blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Luke 19:38) now shouts “Away with him, crucify him” and “we have no king but Caesar!” (John 19:15)
9:45 am – Jesus leaves Pilate and is given His cross to carry.
10:00 am – Jesus begins His walk, while carrying His cross, to Calvary.
11:45 am – Jesus arrives at Calvary.
12:00 pm – Jesus is nailed to the cross.
12:15 pm – Cross is raised.
12:30 pm – “Father forgiven them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)
1:30 pm – Jesus tells the Apostle John to take care of His mother (see John 19:26-27).
2:00 pm – To allow Him to completely feel the depths of sorrow and loneliness, God the Father withdraws His spirit. Jesus cries out “My God, My God, what hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
2:30 pm – Jesus says “I thirst”. He is offered vinegar. (John 19:28-29)
2:45 pm – Jesus declares “It is finished” as He has finished paying for all of our sins, which began in Gethsemane (John 19:30)
3:00 pm – Jesus says “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46) and then dies.
But that isn’t the end of the story.
read the poem That Night and then watch The Savior Suffers in Gethsemane and Jesus is Scourged and Crucified videos.
Saturday, March 30th, is day seven of the Holy Week is usually referred to as “Silent Saturday”, and was the Sabbath day. I imagine that Jesus’s friends and disciples didn’t quite know how to feel or think and words failed as they tried to explain how they felt. In addition they were fear for their own lives and the One they believed was the Messiah was dead in a tomb.
For over three years the disciples walked with Jesus, heard His voice, was taught by Him, and witnessed miracles preformed by Him. He sent some of them out to teach others who performed miracles as well. When they had questions, Jesus would answer them.
But now, after what had to be one of the worst days in their life, it was silent… they couldn’t hear Jesus anymore.
But actually – Jesus wasn’t silent and Silent Saturday wasn’t so silent after all. In John 20:17 (which takes place on Sunday) the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and says he hasn’t yet “ascended” to His father. Prior to this, on Good Friday, while hanging on the cross, in Luke 23:43, Jesus told one of the malefactors that “to day [they would] be with [Him] in paradise.”
The Psalmist wrote “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive” (Psalms 68:18). The author of Ephesians had this verse in mind in Ephesians 4:8, and continued in verse 9 to say that Jesus descended first into the lower parts of the earth.
Isaiah 42:7 says that the Messiah would “bring out the prisoners from the prison”. Isaiah 61:1 (quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18 when He was rejected in Nazareth) says that the Messiah would “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound”.
Jesus hadn’t yet filled His prison ministry or opened the prison of those bound in it. His voice wasn’t heard on earth on Silent Saturday but preaching needed to happen in “the lower parts” of the earth.
1 Peter 3:19-20 reads:
“By which also [Christ] went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”
1 Peter 4:6 reads:
“for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead”.
During the time Jesus was in the grave, when the disciples felt like all was lost and it seemed like Jesus was silent – He was working! He was organizing a mission or a ministry in the world of spirits, symbolically in the “lower parts” of the earth, among the disobedient in “prison” so that they too could hear the Good News and be freed from captivity!
When the darkness feels overwhelming, when prayers seem unanswered, when your faith begins to fade…. remember – it’s not hopeless it’s just Saturday but SUNDAY IS COMING SOON!
Read Luke 4:16-21 and Doctrine and Covenants 138:1-4, 30-34.
Easter Sunday / Resurrection Sunday
Sunday, March 31st, is day eight of Holy Week, Easter Sunday, and is sometimes referred to as Resurrection Sunday.
It’s now the third day since Jesus was arrested, beaten, and died on Good Friday. Most of disciples are hiding, scared for their life’s. Several brave women decide that they need to see the place where Jesus is laid and anoint His body with burial spices, according to the tradition of the day. They get there and find an empty tomb… Jesus is not there! Angels tell these women that Jesus has risen from the dead and instructs them to go tell Peter and the other Disciples. Peter and John run to the tomb and find it empty, and then leave to also tell the disciples.
Mary Magdalene remains behind at the tomb and begins to cry. Suddenly she hears a voice asking her “why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15)
Even though Mary knew Jesus and had heard Him teach countless times in this time of heart ache and pain didn’t recognize the voice of God reaching out to her. In our own life’s how often do we fail to recognize when God reaches out to us in times of sorrow and pain? Yet God doesn’t give up on us.
“Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.” (John 20:16)
As God continues to calls us we can turn to Him and recognize Him!
“Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” (John 20:17).
Even though Jesus had been dead three days He still hadn’t “ascended” to our Father in Heaven. Instead He had spent time in the world of Spirits organizing a mission (see Silent Saturday above for more details).
Mary Magdalene went and told the disciples what she saw and heard.
Then Cleopas and another disciple were walking to Emmaus and Jesus came and taught them about Jesus from the scriptures, although they didn’t recognize Him until the end (see Luke 24:13-35).
The 11 Apostles (and probably others) were gathered together that night and Jesus appeared to them.
He told them “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39) and then ate fish and honeycomb with them.
He taught them and gave them the Great Commission:
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus is risen and because He is risen all of us will rise from the dead. He loves us, even when we are unlovable. This Easter Sunday and always try a little harder to be a little kinder to those around you and help them feel of Jesus’s love.
Read Luke 24:13-35 and Matthew 28:19-20 and then watch Jesus is Resurrected video.
note from Michael H. Cox – I originally posted part of this on my blog and then over the last several years have added, removed, and modified these thoughts on social media. I then complied this for a fireside and then modified it again for this post on LittleValleyWard.com. This is not an official document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, does not necessarily reflect the doctrine or position of the Church, has not been reviewed by the Church, and any errors contained in it are mine.