Every year Holy Week draws the Church towards its most solemn and luminous days. Palms, processions and Passion readings prepare the ground; but the centre of it all comes only at the end, when the Church enters the Sacred Triduum. In 2026, as in every year, these are the days in which Catholics do not simply think about the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ in the abstract. They accompany Him through them.
The Triduum begins with the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday and runs through Good Friday and Holy Saturday to Easter Day. The Church speaks of these not as three isolated feasts, but as one great liturgical action. The Last Supper is not properly understood apart from Calvary; Calvary is not properly understood apart from the empty tomb; and Easter joy is shallow unless it has first passed through the darkness of Gethsemane. The faithful are not meant to dip in and out of these days as if they were separate religious events. They are meant to enter a single mystery that unfolds stage by stage.
