Holy Week 2027: what happened each day, from Palm Sunday to Easter
From the palms on March 21 to the empty tomb on March 28: the events of each day in the Gospels, and the ways Christians still keep them.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 9 min read
They took palm branches and went out to meet Him, shouting: “Hosanna!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the King of Israel!”
John 12:13 · BSB
He is not here; He has risen, just as He said! Come, see the place where He lay.
Matthew 28:6 · BSB
Holy Week is the week before Easter: the days from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday, when Christians follow Jesus through his final week in Jerusalem, his death and his burial, before Easter Sunday celebrates his resurrection. In 2027, Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, March 21, and ends with Easter Sunday, March 28.
It is the one week of the year the Gospels slow down for. Mark gives more than a third of his Gospel to it: a donkey borrowed in a village, a jar of perfume broken over Jesus’ head, a supper in an upstairs room, a garden at night, a borrowed tomb.
Below is each day in order: what happened in the Gospels, one verse from the Berean Standard Bible, and the customs that grew up around it. The last three days, from Holy Thursday evening to Easter evening, are called the Triduum, “the three days,” and they carry the most weight.
The King on a donkey
John 12:13
They took palm branches and went out to meet Him, shouting: “Hosanna!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the King of Israel!”
John 12:13 · BSB
Jesus came down the road from the Mount of Olives on a borrowed colt, and the crowd treated it like a royal entry. They spread cloaks on the road and cut branches; John is the one Gospel that says the branches were palms. Matthew and John both point back to Zechariah 9:9, the King who comes “humble and riding on a donkey.” He was the King they shouted for, though not the kind they expected.
Churches bless palm branches, walk in procession, and then read the whole Passion, so the day holds both the cheering and the cross. People carry the palms home, often folded into small crosses. Many parishes collect them again before the next Lent and burn them for the ashes of Ash Wednesday. Where palms are scarce, people carry what grows nearby: yew in Ireland, pussy willow in Eastern Europe.
A house of prayer
Mark 11:17
Then Jesus began to teach them, and He declared, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Mark 11:17 · BSB
On the evening of the entry, Jesus only looked around the temple and went back to Bethany. The next morning he cursed a fig tree in leaf that had no fruit, then walked into the temple courts and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves.
The fig tree and the temple belong together: a great deal of leaf, very little fruit. The question for us is whether our own churches, and our own hearts, are still a house of prayer.
Words that stay
Mark 13:31
Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
Mark 13:31 · BSB
On Tuesday the fig tree had withered from the roots, and Jesus spent the day in the temple courts being tested. Was it right to give taxes to Caesar? Whose wife would a woman be in the resurrection? Which commandment mattered most? Then he pointed his disciples to a poor widow putting in two small coins, more than all the rest, because it was all she had.
That evening, on the Mount of Olives, he spoke about the temple’s fall and the end of the age. In the middle of it comes this sentence, the one thing that will still be standing.
Two days before the Passover
Matthew 26:14–15
Then one of the Twelve, the one called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you?” And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.
Matthew 26:14–15 · BSB
The Wednesday of Holy Week is called Spy Wednesday in English, after Judas. Mark places two scenes here, two days before the Passover. In Bethany, at the house of Simon the leper, a woman broke a jar of perfume worth more than three hundred denarii, close to a year’s wages, and poured it over Jesus’ head. He said she had anointed his body for burial. Then Judas went to the chief priests.
One gives everything; the other asks what he will get. Many churches hold Tenebrae on Wednesday evening: readings by candlelight, the candles put out one by one until the church is dark, then a sudden loud noise.
Maundy Thursday
John 13:34
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another.
John 13:34 · BSB
At the Passover meal Jesus took bread and said, “This is My body, given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” John adds what happened at the same table: Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet, Judas’ feet among them. Then he gave them this commandment. Its first words in Latin, mandatum novum, “a new commandment,” are where the English name Maundy Thursday comes from.
In the evening, Catholic parishes celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The Gloria is sung while the bells ring, and then they fall silent until the Easter Vigil. The priest washes the feet of members of the parish, often twelve. Afterward the altar is stripped bare and the Eucharist is carried to an altar of repose, where people pray late into the night.
Not My will
Thursday night: Gethsemane
JerusalemThe Garden of GethsemaneAfter the supper they sang a hymn and crossed the Kidron Valley to an olive grove called Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Jesus asked Peter, James and John to keep watch while he prayed, and three times he came back and found them asleep. Luke gives his prayer in a single line: “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Then Judas came with an armed crowd, and the disciples ran.
A garden of very old olive trees is still there, beside the Church of All Nations. The night watch at the altar of repose is the Church’s way of keeping the watch his friends could not.
It is finished
John 19:30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished.” And bowing His head, He yielded up His spirit.
John 19:30 · BSB
Through the night Jesus was questioned before the high priest and the Council, and at dawn he was handed over to Pilate. Mark says he was crucified at the third hour, about nine in the morning, that darkness covered the land from noon until three, and that at three he cried out and breathed his last (Mark 15:25, Mark 15:33–37). Before sunset, Joseph of Arimathea laid his body in a tomb cut from rock.
On Good Friday the Catholic Church celebrates no Mass. Instead there is the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, ideally at three in the afternoon: the Passion according to John, prayers for the whole world, and the veneration of the cross, when people come forward to kneel before it or kiss it. Others pray the Stations of the Cross, or keep the Three Hours’ Agony from noon to three with Jesus’ last words from the cross. Catholics fast and go without meat.
The quiet day
Luke 23:56
Then they returned to prepare spices and perfumes. And they rested on the Sabbath, according to the commandment.
Luke 23:56 · BSB
The women had watched where the body was laid. Then the Sabbath began, and they did the only thing left to do: they rested. Holy Saturday is the day of the closed tomb. The altars stay bare, and there is no Mass during the day.
After dark, the Easter Vigil begins outside the church with a new fire. The tall Easter candle is lit from it and carried into the dark nave while the deacon sings “The Light of Christ” three times, and the flame passes from one small candle to the next until the church glows. Then come the Exsultet, readings from the creation to the prophets, the Gloria with the bells that have been silent since Thursday, and the baptism of new Christians.
He has risen
From Luke 24:5–6
As the women bowed their faces to the ground in terror, the two men asked them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!
From Luke 24:5–6 · BSB
Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, the women went to the tomb with spices to anoint a body. They found the stone rolled away, and two men in radiant apparel asked them the question that turns the whole week around. Everything from Palm Sunday on reads differently after this sentence: the shouts, the supper, the garden, the cross.
Many churches hold sunrise services outdoors to stand where the women stood, at the same hour. Holy Week ends here, and the fifty days of Easter begin.
On your iPhone
Keep Holy Week in view
Holy Week arrives quickly once Lent is underway. MySavior’s countdown widget keeps the days in sight on your Lock Screen or Home Screen. Its calendar of 30 feasts includes each day of the Triduum and works out the moving date of Easter every year.
You can also see how many days are left until Easter here on the site.
Sunday, November 8
9:41
Count down to Easter on your Lock ScreenMySavior counts down to 30 feasts of the Christian year, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter among them.
★ Rated 4.9 on the US App StoreLoved by Christians in 60+ countries8,000+ people every month
A small practice for Holy Week
Read Mark’s account one day at a time, on the day it happened. Palm Sunday: Mark 11:1–11. Monday: Mark 11:12–19. Tuesday: Mark 12:28–44. Wednesday: Mark 14:1–11. Thursday: Mark 14:12–72. Friday: Mark 15:1–47. Saturday: read nothing new; reread Mark 15:42–47 and sit with the closed tomb. Easter morning, as early as you can manage: Mark 16:1–8. By Sunday the empty tomb will feel like the end of a week you lived, not a story you remember.
Keep the feasts close all year
Count down to Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter and 27 other feasts, with a saint for every day of the year.
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Questions
When is Holy Week 2027?
Holy Week 2027 begins on Palm Sunday, March 21, 2027. Holy Thursday is March 25, Good Friday March 26 and Holy Saturday March 27, and the week ends with Easter Sunday, March 28, 2027. In 2028, Palm Sunday is April 9 and Easter is April 16.
What happened on each day of Holy Week?
Palm Sunday: Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. Monday: he cleared the temple. Tuesday: he taught and answered questions in the temple courts. Wednesday: a woman anointed him at Bethany and Judas agreed to betray him. Thursday: the Last Supper, the washing of feet, Gethsemane and his arrest. Friday: his crucifixion, death and burial. Saturday: the Sabbath rest by the closed tomb. Sunday: the empty tomb.
What is the Easter Triduum?
The Triduum, Latin for “three days,” is the heart of Holy Week. It runs from the evening of Holy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday: one celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection, kept over three days.
Why are the dates of Holy Week different every year?
Holy Week is counted back from Easter, and Easter moves. In Western churches it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21, so it can land anywhere from March 22 to April 25. Palm Sunday is always the Sunday before.
Why is it called Good Friday?
The name comes from an older meaning of the English word “good”: holy. It is not, as is sometimes said, a worn-down form of “God Friday.” And the old sense still fits: Christians call the day of the cross good, and holy, because of what Jesus’ death won for the world.
