Toward a Holier Easter
As with all religious celebrations, we become very busy with family, church, and friends. It isn’t hard to lose our focus and be turned away from the intentional worship that should be the center of these celebrations.We have tried to design this website to refocus our worship and find a deeper relationship with our Savior. To this end, we have tried to centralize resources and the experiences of others so that in one place you have many different ideas, experiences, and activities to refocus your attention—as well as that of your families—on a pivotal part of Christ’s ministry: Holy Week and the resurrection.The website is split into different sections with links to help you experience intentional worship this Easter. Our hope is that these resources will help you and your family, ward, and community reach a deeper spiritual understanding of all that He did for us at Easter.
Web
General Searches and ResourcesCome, Follow Me includes an Easter lesson with specific helps and activities for younger children. For a wide array of ideas, visit https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/easter/holy-week.A favorite find is the Holy Week reflection journal. These are available for adults and children and include day-by-day schedules, corresponding scriptures, and related Church videos.Helpful Articles and Guides* LDS Daily Living: A guide focusing on the Passover and Hebrew traditions.
* The Church News: A day-by-day Holy Week guide with messages and activities.
* Meridian Magazine: Making Holy Week meaningful with crafts and scriptures.
* Daily Guide A day by day guide to celebrating easter week with your family
* LDS Daily: Video collections and doctrinal principles for each day.
* Making Easter Memories: Suggestions for prioritizing the holiday.
* Easter Priority: How to give easter the priority it deservesResources for ChildrenThe Friend magazine is a wonderful resource for printable posters and family plays. You can access archives here.
Tip: You can change the year in the website URL to find activities from previous years.From the Friend
* Easter Lily
* Easter Wheel
Videos
The Church offers New Testament videos that follow the life of Christ, which are excellent resources for study. Additionally, there are dedicated Easter video playlists available both on the official Church website and on YouTube. These resources can greatly enhance your personal worship and assist you in teaching your family about the significance of the Easter season.
Books
There are also many books to be found at Deseret Book. Besides searching for "Easter" don’t forget to search for "Holy Week" as well.Seven Stanzas at Easter by John UpdikeMake no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.