And what to hold back
Holy Week is the held breath at the fullest point of the year. It is the holiest week in the Christian calendar, the week towards which all of Lent has been inclined, the week whose three central days — the Sacred Triduum — hold the whole meaning of Christian faith in compressed form.
It is also, for parish communications, the week most easily mishandled.
The temptation is to communicate more, because there is more liturgically happening. The truth is closer to the opposite. Holy Week calls for less, communicated with exceptional care.
What to communicate
The list is short. Published a fortnight in advance, reconfirmed the week before, and included in every channel the parish has, because these are the irreducible things people need to know.
The Triduum Mass times. Maundy Thursday. Good Friday. The Easter Vigil. Exact times, location (if there is any doubt), and a clear indication that these are the three central liturgies of the year and that parishioners are warmly invited. The website, the bulletin, the noticeboard, the parish social media accounts, and a specific email if you maintain a list. Published two weeks ahead so that people can plan, reconfirmed the week of because people will have forgotten.
The invitation to the Easter Vigil, specifically. The Vigil is often the under-communicated liturgy of Holy Week, because parishes worry about its length or its complexity, or because they assume regular Mass-goers will come automatically. Neither assumption is quite right. The invitation to the Vigil should be explicit, warm, and confident. The Vigil is the centre of the Christian year, the Mass towards which all the year’s other Masses point. The parish should say so, in plain language, without apology, and should help first-timers know what to expect.
The invitation to confession. Once, clearly, with the times the priest is available during Holy Week. Not nagging. Not guilt-laden. A simple, warm note that the priest is there, that the sacrament is available, and that Holy Week is a good moment for those who have been away. If the parish has arranged a penance service, one notice with time and place.
A short prayer resource for the week. Stations of the Cross, a reflection on the Triduum, a guide to praying the week with the Church. Something the parish can point to as a way of entering the week prayerfully, for those who want it. Not an ambitious multi-part series. One resource, well chosen, linked from the bulletin and the website.
Mass times on Easter Sunday itself. Published from the First Sunday of Lent onwards, reconfirmed during Holy Week, published prominently the weekend of. Easter Sunday is the day when non-regular churchgoers return in numbers; Mass times need to be unambiguously findable by anyone who searches for them.
That is the list. Genuinely. Most parishes over-produce in Holy Week by a factor of three, and the over-production is what blunts the week’s actual power.
What to hold back
Also a specific list. Things that ordinarily have a place in parish communications but that should wait until after the Octave of Easter.
- Any appeal for money that is not itself framed as part of the season (the Holy Places Collection on Good Friday is an obvious exception). Routine financial appeals, even worthy ones, can wait.
- Hall bookings, social committee updates, parish trip announcements, non-urgent operational content.
- New initiatives. The week of the Triduum is not the moment to launch a new ministry, introduce a new format, or publish a first announcement of anything. New initiatives deserve their own attention, and Holy Week will not give it to them. Launch in Ordinary Time, when the parish can receive new things well.
- Upcoming summer events. They can wait a week. Nobody is going to miss your parish barbecue because it was announced on 10 April rather than 3 April.
- “Easter is coming” countdown content that turns the liturgical week into a marketing moment. The countdown has its own spiritual form, which is the liturgy itself. The parish’s job is not to build hype around Easter; it is to let the liturgy do what the liturgy does.
- Photographs of the washing of the feet, the Good Friday veneration of the cross, or the Vigil itself, posted in real time during the liturgies. These belong to the liturgy and its participants, not to the parish social media feed. If you want a photograph for later, take it sparingly, and post it once the week is complete.
The register
How Holy Week communications should sound. Quieter. More reverent. Less punctuation. Fewer exclamation marks, and never the double ones. Short sentences. More white space. Fewer images, and the ones used chosen carefully.
The visual and verbal register of the communications should signal to the reader, without having to say so, that the Church is in a holy week. Something should feel different about how the newsletter reads, how the social media looks, how the website banner sits. If the parish’s communications feel identical on Palm Sunday to how they felt the previous Sunday, the communications are not carrying the week.
This is not about designing a dramatic “Holy Week theme.” It is about quieting down what is already there. Strip a little. Leave more space. Let the liturgy fill the silence the communications have made.
Closing
A parish that gets Holy Week communications right is a parish that teaches its readers, without saying so, what Holy Week is for.
The emptiness of the week, communicationally, mirrors the emptiness of the tomb. The quietness leaves space for the event. The short list of things published, published carefully, makes each of those things legible. The things not published, the cake sales and hall bookings and summer trip announcements that did not arrive in Friday’s newsletter, tell the parishioner something she will not articulate but will feel: that this week is different, that the parish knows it, and that her own attention has been given a place to settle.
Easter lands harder as a result. Not because the parish has hyped it, but because the parish has cleared the space around it.
Plan the week quietly. Communicate sparely. Let the liturgy do what the liturgy does. The parish will feel the difference.
This piece is part of the Pillar 2 series within the True Light Digital Formation framework. For the full cornerstone essay on which it is based, see truelight.digital/formation/rhythm-and-restraint/.