Great Lent is not merely a time of abstinence but a season of inner “restoration” for the human person, Archbishop Ioan of Tirana, Durrës and All Albania said in a sermon published by the press service of the Albanian Orthodox Church.

According to the Archbishop, fasting can be compared to the restoration of icons. Over time, he noted, icons become covered with soot and lose their brightness, but once cleaned, their original light and beauty are revealed. The same, he said, happens with the words of prayer: when repeated mechanically, they lose their depth. Great Lent is given to restore their authentic meaning.

The Archbishop drew particular attention to the Lenten prayer of Ephrem the Syrian, which is read throughout the fasting season in Orthodox churches. In it, believers ask to be delivered from the “spirit of idleness, despondency, love of power and idle talk,” and to be granted instead “chastity, humility, patience and love.”

He observed that the vices listed in the prayer are often perceived as minor, yet they shape a person’s inner condition. Idleness, he explained, represents a loss of spiritual energy that robs a person of the ability to perceive goodness and breeds constant dissatisfaction. Curiosity, in the negative sense, becomes a fixation on superficial information and the lives of others, distracting from one’s own spiritual path. Love of power turns into the desire to use others for personal ends, while aimlessness signals the loss of life’s deeper purpose and meaning.

In contrast, the Church calls the faithful to wisdom, humility, patience and love. Humility, the Archbishop said, is the ability to see oneself soberly and without illusion; patience is the capacity to measure present difficulties against the horizon of eternity; and love is the highest expression of Christian life and the path to genuine unity with God.

Without inner renewal, he stressed, fasting loses its meaning. “There is nothing more empty than words without content,” he said, emphasizing that the goal of Lent is not the formal observance of rules, but spiritual growth and an encounter with the Risen Christ at Easter.