Holy Week timeline: the last week of Jesus, day by day

Holy Week runs from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday crowns it. Jesus enters Jerusalem on Sunday, clears the Temple on Monday, teaches and debates on Tuesday, is betrayed on Wednesday, shares the Last Supper on Thursday, dies on Friday, rests in the tomb on Saturday and rises on Sunday.

The Gospels do not always name the day, so some placements, Spy Wednesday above all, come from tradition and from reading the four accounts side by side. The Jesus Christ coloring book carries the two hinges of the week: the Last Supper and the Resurrection.

Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem to fulfil the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, which promised a king coming humble and mounted on a donkey, not a warhorse. Pilgrims arriving for Passover spread cloaks and palm branches on the road and shout Hosanna, a cry from Psalm 118 meaning save us.

The scene is a public claim. A crowd greets a man from Galilee as the son of David, at the feast that celebrates freedom from Egypt, in a city held by Roman soldiers.

Luke adds a quieter moment. As the city comes into view from the Mount of Olives, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. Many churches still bless palms on this Sunday and keep them until the next Lent, when they are burned for the ashes.

On Monday Jesus drives the money changers and dove sellers out of the Temple courts, quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah: a house of prayer made into a den of robbers. On Tuesday the authorities question him there all day, and he answers with parables, the tribute to Caesar and the greatest commandment.

The fig tree frames both days. On Monday morning Jesus finds it full of leaves and bare of fruit, and curses it. On Tuesday the disciples pass it withered from the roots, and he talks to them about faith and prayer.

Tuesday is the longest day in the Gospels. Jesus praises a poor widow who drops two small coins in the treasury, and in the evening, on the Mount of Olives, he speaks of the Temple’s fall and the end of the age.

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, by the most common reading, Judas Iscariot goes to the chief priests and agrees to hand Jesus over for thirty pieces of silver. Tradition calls it Spy Wednesday for that secret bargain. Matthew and Mark set it two days before Passover, right after an anointing at Bethany.

At Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman breaks a jar of costly perfume over the head of Jesus. Some at the table call it waste. Jesus says she has prepared his body for burial, and that her act will be told wherever the Gospel is preached.

Matthew alone names the price, thirty silver coins, the sum Zechariah links to a rejected shepherd. From then on, he writes, Judas watches for a chance.

On Thursday evening Jesus shares the Passover meal with the twelve in an upper room. He washes their feet, gives them bread and wine as his body and blood, and foretells his betrayal. The name Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, the new commandment of John 13:34: love one another.

After the meal they sing a hymn and walk to the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. Jesus prays alone that the cup might pass from him, while Peter, James and John fall asleep three times.

Judas arrives with an armed crowd and greets Jesus with a kiss, the signal. Peter draws a sword, Jesus heals the wounded servant, and the disciples scatter into the dark.

The Last Supper has its own page in the Jesus Christ coloring book. Many people color it on Thursday evening, before or after the service, with candlelight colors: ochre, deep red, the warm brown of the table.

Good Friday begins in the night with the trials: before Annas, then Caiaphas and the council, then Pontius Pilate, who sends Jesus to Herod and back. Pilate offers to free a prisoner, the crowd asks for Barabbas, and Jesus is flogged and led to Golgotha, where he is crucified and dies around three in the afternoon.

In the courtyard Peter denies him three times before the rooster crows. On the road, the soldiers force Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross. Above Jesus, a sign in three languages reads King of the Jews.

The Gospels record seven sayings from the cross, among them Father, forgive them, and It is finished. Darkness covers the land from noon, and the curtain of the Temple tears in two.

Before sunset, when the Sabbath begins, Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for the body. With Nicodemus he wraps it in linen and lays it in a new tomb cut from rock, and a stone is rolled across the door.

Holy Saturday is the day Jesus lies in the tomb. The Gospels say almost nothing: the women who prepared spices rest on the Sabbath as the law commands, and Matthew records that the chief priests have the tomb sealed and set a guard. For the followers of Jesus it is a day of grief and waiting.

The Church keeps it as the quietest day of the year. Many churches hold no Mass during the day, and the altar stays bare.

After dark, the Easter Vigil begins with a new fire and a single candle carried into a dark church. If you color through the week, this is a good day to leave the page blank, or to choose only grays and one small flame.

Early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and other women come to the tomb with spices and find the stone rolled away and the body gone. An angel tells them: he is not here; he has risen. That same day the risen Jesus appears to Mary in the garden, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to the eleven.

Each Gospel tells it its own way. In John, Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener until he speaks her name. Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb and find the linen cloths lying there.

The Resurrection closes both of our faith books. The Jesus Christ book ends on the empty tomb, and the Holy Bible book carries you there from Creation. For the whole road before this week, see the life of Jesus in chronological order.

Read the day’s passage from the table, then color one scene for twenty minutes, no more. In 2027 Holy Week runs from Palm Sunday, March 21, to Easter Sunday, March 28. Print your pages the weekend before so the week holds no errands, only reading and color.

Keep one rule: color the scene of the day, not the next one. On Thursday you stay at the table; on Friday you stay at the cross. The slowness is the point.

Start in Lent if you want a longer road; our Lent ideas for adults lay out a week-by-week plan. For the printing itself, our guide on how to print a coloring book PDF covers paper and settings.

Choosing a book for someone else? Our list of the best Bible coloring books for adults compares four that tell the story, and what Jesus looked like helps with skin, hair and clothing colors.

Eight days, eight passages, eight scenes. Read slowly, color slowly, and by Easter morning you will know the week the way the Gospels tell it, in order.

Print the first page before Palm Sunday and begin at the gates of Jerusalem.