Here’s What Happened During the Remarkable Passion Week

Passion Week, also called Holy Week, lasts from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Its name derives from the Latin word passio, which means “suffering.” In 2026, the week lasts from March 29 to April 5.

Pondering each day what happened to Jesus during the original Passion Week gives us a more worshipful attitude all week. But it can be difficult to glean that from the various Gospels. Thankfully, scholars have harmonized the Gospels for us.

This is the first of a four-part series that describes each day’s events and offers Bible readings.

Palm Sunday

The Triumphal Entry

Location: Bethany, Jerusalem, Bethany

“Go,” Jesus tells two disciples. “In that village, you’ll find a donkey tied with her colt. Untie them and bring them to me.”

They find the donkey and colt just as Jesus said. Quickly, they untie them and bring them to Jesus. Then they lay their cloaks on the beasts.

The large crowd at Jerusalem’s gate had heard Jesus was coming. They want to see this miracle worker who raised to life a man dead four days. Could he be the Messiah, the long-awaited King who would rule forever? Will he now lead an army to beat back Rome?

Jesus mounts the donkey colt, who has never before been ridden. He arrives, not on a war horse but on a donkey colt, in peace. Nevertheless, the crowd sees him and rushes to place their cloaks on the road before him. Some run to cut palm branches from nearby trees and spread those before Jesus too. It is an honor fit for a king.

“Hosanna to the Son of David!” they shout (Matthew 21:9). Hosanna means “God save us,” but Jesus knows they do not realize his true identity. Still, Son of David means they think he is the Messiah. They continue: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

But even his disciples miss the full significance of what Jesus does. It is not until later that they realize he has just fulfilled the words of the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
   righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Zechariah 9:9

Read

• Matthew 21:1–9
• John 12:12–19

Passion Week: Holy Monday

Teaching

Location: Jerusalem

On Monday of Passion Week, Jesus taught the crowd gathered at the temple for Passover. When he heard that God-fearing Greeks sought him, he said this:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

John 12:23-24

Those listening did not understand the significance of three things in his statement.

Misunderstanding 1: The Meaning Of “Son of Man”

First, “Son of Man” can mean simply “human,” but Jesus reveals elsewhere that he means the divine Son of Man whom Daniel prophesied about:

“I saw in the night visions,
   and behold, with the clouds of heaven
      there came one like a son of man,
   and he came to the Ancient of Days
      and was presented before him.
   And to him was given dominion
      and glory and a kingdom,
   that all peoples, nations, and languages
      should serve him;
   his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

      which shall not pass away,
   and his kingdom one
      that shall not be destroyed.”

Daniel 7:13–14

Misunderstanding 2: Jesus’s True Mission

Second, they did not know he meant he had come to die. The people wanted an earthly king who would deliver them from Roman rule. But Jesus was also the Suffering Servant about whom Isaiah wrote:

By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

Isaiah 53:8

Misunderstanding 3: The Breadth of Jesus’s Mission

Third, they did not know that Jesus came to save non-Jews. Yet this is what Isaiah prophesied about the Suffering Servant:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

Isaiah 49:6

In John 12:23-24 above, Jesus is the grain of wheat that fell into the earth and died. Then he rose and bore much fruit, bringing to God both Jews and non-Jews.

While he died as the Suffering Servant who cleanses people’s transgression, he arose in glory. For he is also the Divine Son of Man whose dominion is everlasting.

Read

• John 12:20–50

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In This Series

1. Here’s What Happened During the Remarkable Passion Week: Palm Sunday and Holy Monday
2. Holy or “Fig” Tuesday and Holy or “Spy” Wednesday
3. Holy or “Maundy” Thursday and Good or “Passion” Friday
4. Holy or “Black” Saturday and Resurrection or “Easter” Sunday

Related Post

• An Easter Poem

Books You Might Like

• Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict? by John Wenham
• The Biblical Theology Study Bible, ed. D.A. Carson
• Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament, by Jean E. Jones, Pam Farrel, and Karla Dornacher
• Discovering Good News in John, by Jean E. Jones, Pam Farrel, and Karla Dornacher