Lent and Holy Week

These resources should help to add color and spirit to your celebration of the season of Lent, in the church or in the home.

Want to share seasonal texts, images, music or reflections? Know about resources others might find useful? Click here to submit.

What's New for Lent and Holy Week

The Text This Week is a popular and seasonal lectionary-based set of resources. While the name focuses on text, don't be fooled: it is filled with images, music and drama suggestions, sermon helps, and more. In particular, they offer carefully indexed seasonal art resources. The site has special resources for Lent and for Holy Week.

Worship.ca is another great source for online resources, with specific resources for Holy Week.

Many parishes adopt a discipline of Stations of the Cross during Lent and Holy Week. Two online versions of the Stations of the Cross — one with meditations from St. Francis of Assisi, the other from Cardinal Newman — are available here. Another online version of the Stations of the Cross is found here, this one featuring art ranging from Renaissance classics to a seventh-grader's drawing. Of particular use is a Stations of the Cross liturgy designed for children. Parishioners and small groups may also find helpful two books on the Stations of the Cross: John Peterson's Walk in Jerusalem: Stations of the Cross and Katerina Katsarka Whitley's Walking the Way of Sorrows: Stations of the Cross.

The Episcopal Church and Visual Arts website has archived a powerful 2004 exhibition called “Walking the Way of the Cross” that includes a Stations of the Cross with photographs from New York City’s Ground Zero.

The Rev. Thomas L. Weitzel offers helpful suggestions for Holy Week liturgies.

Vennie Constant's program "Visions from the Cross" provides weekly suggestions for social justice activities, appropriate for parishes and small groups during Lent.

Episcoveg offers resources for vegetarian or vegan Episcopalians during Lent and Easter.

Anglicans Online includes a page of Lent and Easter resources.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America also includes a helpful page of Lenten liturgical ideas, including a children's liturgy for Shrove Tuesday. The Presybterian Church also has a page of online resources for Lent that includes ideas for children and families.

There are a wealth of Lenten meditation books available for small groups or individual Lenten disciplines: Martin L. Smith's A Season for the Spirit: Readings for the Days of Lent, Timothy Perry's Blessed Is She: Living Lent with Mary, Albert Holtz’s Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent, John Moses's Desert: An Anthology for Lent, Women of Brigid’s Place's Gifts from Within: Women’s Meditations for Lent, G.P. Mellick Belshaw’s edited collection Lent with Evelyn Underhill, Barbara Cawthorne Crafton's Living Lent: Meditations for These Forty Days, Christopher L. Weber's Time to Turn: Anglican Readings for Lent and Easter Week, and Sherri L. Vallee's Not by Bread Alone.

Those who serve on altar guilds will find helpful Christopher Levan’s Give Us This Day: Lenten Reflections on Baking Bread and Discipleship.

Additional Resources for Lent and Holy Week

Noel Bailey of St. George's/San Jorge in Lee, Massachusetts, has appreciated the dramatic presentations of scripture contributed by Children at Worship-Congregations in Bloom.

Jennifer Phillips of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Kingston, Rhode Island, composed these five collects for Lent. She also offers a different take on the Improperia for Good Friday for those who may be troubled by the anti-semitic tone of the traditional rendering.

Byron Stuhlman serves as the chair of the Liturgy and Music Commission for the Diocese of Central New York. He shares this set of supplications (proper to various feasts and seasons) for Eucharistic Prayers A and B adapted from the Presbyterian Book of Worship.

Worship Well Lenten Image Gallery: Several artists in the Episcopal Church and Visual Arts community have agreed to share this set of images guaranteed to stir the senses and spark meditation during Lent.

Stations of the Cross are a popular, interactive way to walk with Christ through Lent as a congregation, as a family or on your own. Consider these examples:

  • Elizabeth Erickson of the Diocese of Chicago has created "Jesus' Climb to Calvary," a poetic collection of 14 responsive readings based on the Book of Wisdom.
  • The Children at Worship Lenten Prayers project can be designed to serve as a moving Stations of the Cross installation.
  • Artist Noyes Capehart has crafted his own "Way of the Cross," a set of 14 woodcuts depicting the Via Dolorosa.
  • Dorothy Gager shares "And She Shall Dance," a set of seven bas relief sculptures that mark the journey from desolation to dancing.
  • The Episcopal Church and Visual Arts website features "In the Cross of Christ," a collection of various artists' approaches to this unique devotion.
Wayne Anthony, the music director at Trinity Episcopal Church in Toledo, Ohio, shares two musical settings for Lent: The Seekers Church is an intentional, inclusive Christian community in Washington, DC. Their community life and liturgies are patterned after the Church of the Savior, also based in Washington. The Seekers Church website features a rich sampling of their creative liturgical work, all of it available for downloading, usage, and adaptation.

R.C. Laird, a liturgist and musician formerly on the staff of the Cathedral of St. Mark in Minneapolis and a member of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, draws special attention to this Eucharistic Prayer from the Church of England's Common Worship project. Note: R.C. suggests adjusting the language to make it more inclusive, as they've done at the Cathedral for Lent.

The community at Bethel United Methodist Church in Pulaski, Tennessee, has designed its own Way of the Cross, a Lenten devotion for observing the 14 stations of the cross.

Stages on the Way: Worship Resources for Lent, Holy Week and Easter is a book from The Wild Goose Group, a collective that creates contemporary, participatory, justice- oriented liturgy and music resources as part of the Iona Community in Scotland.

The United Church of Christ offers several options for folks looking for liturgical resources:

Don't forget to check these denominational pages for seasonal resources:

Richard McCall, Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies at Episcopal Divinity School, shares a Eucharistic prayer that is especially suited to Maundy Thursday.

If you're crafting services in a Spanish-speaking or bilingual congregation, these seasonal prefaces in Spanish from El Libro de Oración Común will prove useful.

The Reformed Church in America offers this set of resources for the seasons of Lent, Easter and Pentecost.

Art to Heart's Worship Resource features a special set of Lenten Resources.

Anglicans around the world share Lenten worship practices and information in the Anglicans Online A-Z Resource Area.

The United Methodist Church's Worship Office offers up a comprehensive directory of Lent resources. Take special note of their Lenten music suggestions and selections and the instructions for creating a Multisensory Worship Service for Holy Thursday.