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Templates for Holy Week & Stations of the Cross

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Here are three sets of templates for Holy Week. They are not intended as just “coloring” pages (unless that’s how you want to use them) but as a format for corralling your thoughts, prayers, and reflections about the days of Holy Week. The first set is individual, circular templates for each of the days from Holy Wednesday to Easter Sunday. The second is a single, circular calendar-page from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday. The third is a template is for the Stations of the Cross.

For the Holy Week templates, you can incorporate them with your intercessory prayers or with your current Lenten discipline. Another idea is to place your griefs, sorrows, questions, queries, beliefs, unbeliefs, petitions, wails, wows, gratitudes, grudges, pains, pleasures, satisfactions, sufferings—anything that comes up for you—on the templates. Use words, doodles, strokes of the pen, dots, dashes, color….

I like to read the daily readings for Holy Week and choose a word or phrase to hold onto for the day. My post on lectio divina might be helpful. Click here for a link to the 2021 Holy Week lectionary readings.

Examples of the way I used these large circular templates last year are in a collage below.

Holy Week Templates

The idea for the templates arose from an ancient Christian hymn called All in the Morning. Here is a summary of the lines:

It was on Holy Wednesday and all in the morning that Judas betrayed our dear Heavenly King….
It was on Holy Thursday and all in the morning, they plaited a crown of thorns for our Heavenly King….
It was on Good Friday and all in the morning, they crucified our Savior and our Heavenly King….

There are two options for Thursday and Friday. To download the templates, click on the name below the template. Download first, then print.These templates are also on the Handouts Page.

Holy Wednesday.pdf     
Holy or Maundy Thursday Thorns.pdf     
Holy or Maundy Thursday Cup.pdf                                                                                                                                                          

Good Friday 1.pdf        Good Friday 2.pdf
Holy Saturday.pdf
Easter Day Template .pdf          Easter Day Template. jpg
The template for Saturday is blank. You can do whatever you want with the circle. For me Holy Saturday feels like the end of the line, so last year I just colored it black and wrote this poem:

Holy Saturday
The blackest day
The emptiest day
The sorriest day
The silent-as-a-grave day
The hold-your-breath day
The candles-barely-shed-a ray day
The waiting day
The no-word-from-God day
The hope-slides-into-hopeless day
The call-it-quits day
The please, Lord, give-us-a-glimmer-of-light day

Holy Week on One Page

Holy Week Template     .pdf   or .jpg

Stations of the Cross Template

When people as early as the 4th century began to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land from Europe and Asia, they wanted to walk the route Jesus took from the place of his death sentence by Pilate to the place of his crucifixion and burial. This walk became known as the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows. At each stop along the way, pilgrims sang hymns, read Scripture, and said prayers.

Stations of the Cross are a way people can experience this journey of tears without traveling to Jerusalem. Many churches have paintings or sculptures of these events or stations on their walls. Over the centuries the number of stations depicting Jesus’s journey to the cross and death has changed.. Fourteen is the common number for many churches now. Each station offers an opportunity to enter into the story, to contemplate, and to pray. Holy Week and especially Good Friday are typical times for praying the Stations of the Cross.

If you are unfamiliar with this practice, you can explore websites with the history of Stations of the Cross. There are hundreds of examples of Stations of the Cross liturgies with prayers and readings. Click here for one example.

Below is a template for you to make your own Stations of the Cross journey with Jesus on paper. Each of the fourteen cloud shapes has a sentence for the station and an empty space with a cross. As you imagine yourself in Jerusalem on this sorrowful walk to the cross, add your own images, doodles, or words. Read. Sing. Think. Pray. Be there.

Stations of the Cross.pdf

Holy Thursday Prayers for the World

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It was on Holy Thursday and all in the morning

They plaited a crown of thorns for our Heavenly King

And was not this a woeful thing

And sweet Jesus we’ll call him by name.

These words are from a traditional English carol called And All in the Morning.
(If you receive these blog posts in an email, you might have to go to the blog site to hear the song.)

Even though I am physically separated and sheltered from a worshipping community this year, Lent feels much less private than normal. I usually turn inward and spend more time alone during Lent. This year, to my surprise, my attention is drawn outward towards what is happening outside the four walls of my house and across the waters to other parts of the world. This worldwide virus event is like a banquet to which everyone on the planet has received an invitation and no one chooses to attend. There is sacrifice, hardship, disease, and death across the globe. But there is also comradeship and common interest and concern and conversation. To experience this pandemic during Lent is being IN the drama of suffering and sorrow rather than just commemorating it like we do each year. Jesus was willing to share and experience the suffering of fellow humans.

I like the round, globelike template this week as a way to focus on the solidarity and not the separateness of the world. From the center of the circle I can view the North, South, East, and West. I also like the circle because it gives me a framework and a boundary. With so much to obsess and think about, the simplicity and structure of the circle offers a starting place of ease and freedom. for drawing. HERE is the link to today’s template.

The Exodus reading for today is about the Passover. The Israelites prepare a banquet in accordance with God’s orders and place the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and the lintel of their houses. This ensures that the plague will pass over them. Passover this year began last night and continues until April 16. It’s an appropriate time to pray that this modern day plague will pass by us and others around the world.

 

Here are the lectionary readings for the day:
Exodus 12: 1-4 (5-10), 11-14
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13: 1-17, 31b-35

Footwashing

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The Maundy Thursday service with communion and footwashing is one of my favorite worship experiences of the liturgical year. As parishioners walk down the aisle to the front of the church with all sorts and conditions of bare feet, it feels like a time of shared vulnerability and humility. We often sing one of my favorite hymns “Jesu, Jesu Fill Us with Your Love.”  Baby-soft young feet, well-pedicured polished feet, and gnarled, old, lived-in toes plunge into the same basin. Adults and children take turns at being washers and being the washed. Since this is not a weekly occurrence at church, parishioners have been prepared with articles in the newsletter and explanations about the procedure at the beginning of the service. It is a well-choreographed evening with advance preparation by clergy and lay leaders and a Mr. Rogers kind of reassurance for our comfort.

A few years ago I went to a spirituality and dance conference where most of the people did not know each other. At the opening session, the leaders announced that we were going to have a footwashing. I was horrified and thought: “This is not the way to start a conference. People do not understand what this is all about. A footwashing is too personal, too intimate an activity for an opening event. Don’t these leaders know anything about protocol and about not scaring off the introverts?”

We broke into groups of three. One person had her feet in the water, one person washed and the other person dried. I went into this activity with arrogance and resistance. “I don’t even know these people,” I thought. When it came time to have my feet washed, I complied. When the washer finished scooping handfuls of warm water on my feet, a woman on her knees wrapped my feet in a big towel. She held both feet on her lap and proceeded to dry them. With almost sacramental attention she moved the towel between each toe making sure there was no remaining moisture. With her careful and unhurried tenderness my resistance caved and I started to cry. Who but a loving parent would take the time to dry the toes of a child like this? Who but a loving, father-mother God would show up unbidden to shatter my narrow-minded assumptions and to give me needed care and attention in the form of a person with a towel.

Footwashing 2015 resized

 

Maundy Thursday/Last Supper/Passover Poem

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Passover Poem

Pass through the Exit gates of Eden
Pass over the plagues of death
Pass under the Red Sea waves
Pass by in a pillar of cloud
Pass up the offerings of Baal
Pass down the Covenant of God
Pass into the Promised Land
Pass out the loaves and fishes
Pass around the bread and the wine
Pass along the story of salvation
Pass from life to death
Pass through the Entrance gates of Heaven

Sybil MacBeth
Copyright 2009

Maundy Thursday Footnotes

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Last night at church, a pair of women washed my feet. I washed a few sets of feet as well. Tittering and giggling were plentiful from the people hunkered at the basins of water. I heard multiple apologies like, “I did just take a shower before I came.” “I had a pedicure today.”–Three times I heard this comment. The feet at our footwashing last night were probably some of the cleanest and most well-heeled in the world. And yet awkwardness, even shame abounded.

Imagine what it was like for Peter to receive the ministrations of Jesus. Peter’s feet were probably some of the filthiest on the planet–fish guts and city sewage between the toes. In the embarrassing act of footwashing, Jesus taught the disciples about serving and being served, about loving and being loved. He gives them a mandate: “A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34 NIV)

I wonder if the footwashing was also an anointing. Jesus anointed the disciples’ feet for the sacred and dangerous journey they were about to begin—the journey to “Go and make disciples” and the journey to their deaths.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010