Holy Week baroque composers were usually intended for performance during the evening of Holy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In the Orthodox Church, the forty days of Great Lent end on the Friday before Palm Sunday. The two days that follow, Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, form a transition to Holy Week, neither in Lent nor in Holy Week themselves, but in combination with Holy Week containing the continuing observances in preparation for Pascha (Easter), during which the faithful continue to fast. Lazarus Saturday commemorates Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead, just before he went to Jerusalem himself. The main
Holy Week Passion Week (the week before Holy Week) to the level of a commemoration, and in 1969 the celebration was removed from the General Roman Calendar as a duplicate of the September feast. Observance of the calendar as it stood in 1962 is still permitted as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, and even where the calendar as revised in 1969 is in use, some countries, such as Malta, have kept it in their national calendars. In every country, the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal provides an alternative collect for this Friday: <poem> O God, who in this season