Holy Week

Ash Wednesday

Lent is 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday. Lent is a time of penance, prayer, preparation for or recollection of baptism, and preparation for the celebration of Easter. In Christianity, a time of fasting and repentance in the spring, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending several weeks later on Easter. To “give something up for Lent” is to abandon a pleasurable habit as an act of devotion and self-discipline.

Holy Week is the last week of Lent, the week immediately preceding Easter Sunday., Holy Week, known as Semana Santa, is treated as one of the most important religious festivals of the entire year. At Mass on Palm Sunday, Catholics carry "palaspas" or palm leaves to be blessed by the priest. Many Filipinos bring home the palm leaves after the Mass and place these above their front doors or their windows, believing that doing so can ward off evil spirits. Holy Monday marks the beginning of the Pabasa (literally, reading) or Pasyon, the marathon chanting of the story of Jesus' life, passion, and death, which continues day and night, for as long as two straight days.

Palm Sunday - "Palaspas"

A popular Holy Thursday tradition is the Bisita Iglesia (Church Visit), Old traditional rituals in the Philippines where the faithful visit at least 7 churches on Maundy Thursday and say their prayers or do the Station of the Cross.

The last Mass before Easter is also celebrated on Holy Thursday, usually including a reenactment of the Washing of the Feet of the Apostles; this Mass is followed by the procession of the Blessed Sacrament before it is taken to the Altar of Repose. Good Friday in the Philippines is commemorated with street processions, the Way of the Cross, the commemoraton of Jesus' Seven last words (Siete Palabras) and a Passion play called the Sinakulo. In some communities, the processions include devotees who self-flagellate and sometimes even have themselves nailed to crosses as expressions of penance. After three o'clock in the afternoon of Good Friday (the time at which Jesus is traditionally believed to have died), noise is discouraged, bathing is proscribed and the faithful are urged to keep a solemn and prayerful disposition through Black Saturday. Easter morning is marked with joyous celebration, the first being the dawn Salubong, wherein large statues of Jesus and Mary are brought in procession together to meet, imagining the first reunion of Jesus and his mother Mary after Jesus' Resurrection. This is followed by the joyous Easter Mass.