 This is the week preceding Easter, which climaxes with the Crucifixion on Good Friday and ends with the joyous Easter.Since they are not related to each other dogmatically, in early Christianity, the Great Lent fast and the Holy Week fast were fasted separately.It was later in Church history that the Fathers of the Church saw it as spiritually beneficial to join them concurrently, and later added the Preparatory week to enable the faithful to prepare themselves spiritually and bodily to experience the benefits of the fasts.