Why Lent Endures in the Orthodox Church - Fr. John Kent Reimann - (Special Episode)

Great and Holy Lent isn’t a gloomy season or a spiritual trend. It’s the Orthodox Church’s tested way of turning back to Christ with clarity, humility, and real practices that reshape the heart. Archpriest Father John Kent Reimann discusses Lent as an honest invitation to pray with King David’s words, “Search my heart, O Lord,” and to bring our lives into conformity with Christ and the life of the Church without losing the uniqueness of who God made us to be.

Why are young people walking away from comfy megachurch vibes and toward ancient disciplines? We talk about why Orthodoxy keeps Lent, and why struggle can be healing with God’s strength.

Great and Holy Lent is our yearly reminder to let God search our hearts and to recommit our lives to Christ in a concrete way. We trace how Lent formed catechumens for baptism and why the same path still serves the whole Church as continual conversion and readiness for the Lord’s coming.

 • Great and Holy Lent as heart-searching repentance and renewal
 • The forty-day fast as a biblical pattern shaped by Christ’s wilderness fast
 • Lent’s early role in preparing catechumens through daily teaching and Scripture
 • Baptism, chrismation, and first communion as the original Lenten destination
 • Lent as ongoing conversion for those raised Orthodox
 • Salvation as a process while we await the second coming and judgment
 • Bridegroom services and the call to stay watchful
 • Fasting, increased prayer, almsgiving, and hospitality as lived love
 • Young people seeking demanding spiritual practices over comfort
 • Following ancient disciplines with guidance from clergy and a spiritual father
 
 We also explore the history behind the forty-day fast and why Lent became a focused season of preparation for catechumens. In the early Church, those preparing for baptism and chrismation met daily for Scripture and teaching, received the bishop’s blessing, and then entered the Church through the sacraments and their first Holy Communion. That original purpose still explains so much about Orthodox Lent today: intensified prayer, more services, deeper catechesis, and a rhythm that forms people for sacramental life rather than quick inspiration.
 
 From there, we connect Lent to the bigger Orthodox view of salvation as a process. We’re not trying to “win” Lent; we’re learning to live awake as we await Christ’s second coming and the final judgment. Holy Week’s bridegroom services sharpen that focus, calling us to be ready rather than careless, like the wise virgins who keep watch. We end with the practical pillars of Orthodox spirituality: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and hospitality, lived with wise spiritual direction from clergy and a spiritual father. If you’re drawn to ancient Christian disciplines or you’re tired of being pandered to by comfortable religion, this conversation will help you understand why challenge can be healing when it’s done with God’s strength.

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Transcript

What Great Lent Is For

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A great and holy lint for us as Orthodox Christians. Um it is a time in which we are seeking to renew our uh faith and our commitment to Christ, to introspectively look within, uh as the psalmist says, as King David says, search my heart, O Lord, and see if there be any wicked way within me. And striving to bring ourselves to conformity to Christ and the Church in our person, in the uniqueness of our person. The

Why Forty Days Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:29

original purpose from what we know uh from some of the primary sources that have survived that we can read. The forty-day fast, of course, we see that uh echoing in various places in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But the

Lent And The First Catechumens

SPEAKER_00 0:44

church had chosen the time of Lent as being a time of preparation, especially for those who were catechumens, to bring them into the church. Um a forty-day concerted effort of daily meeting with the bishop, of having scriptures read to them, uh some teaching that would be done to them, and then he would bless them at the end of that period of time, and as many people could come to that daily teaching over the forty days, and then they would be brought in to the church through the um uh sacraments of baptism and chrismation, and then taken into the church vr immediately afterwards uh for the liturgy and receiving communion.

Lent For Lifelong Conversion

SPEAKER_00 1:28

And so this was originally the time intense preparation for those who were being uh illumined and brought into the church. But the church also realized uh very early on, very early on, that this was something that was greatly beneficial for all of the Orthodox faithful. Because as more and more people were then baptized as children coming into the church, they still needed, as they grew up, to also realize that they need to strive to bring themselves into conformity with Christ in the church. What was intended for a lot of the um adults converting, we realize that also those of us who were born into the Orthodox Church would seek to also be able to be um converted as well too. So for us, it's it's a it's a reminder of our need for our continual conversion that we're striving to be able to do. And also for us coming from a former evangelical background, it kind of is our revival time. Uh when I was in the the Conservative Baptist Church, we would bring in some preachers to do uh uh revival. And um, you know, it's it's kind of was interesting because I thought that was kind of interesting. Why is it we're just doing it one time of the year? Well, even for Great and Holy Lent, although we have really four different Lenten periods throughout the church year, but that's why we call this one Great and Holy Lent, because of the significance of following Jesus and his 40-day fast in the desert, to uh defeat the evil one and his temptations of us, and we're striving in all things to follow Christ and be like Christ, but in the uniqueness of our person.

Salvation As A Living Process

SPEAKER_00 3:14

And so that uh in this uh fasting period, we're striving to rededicate our life anew because we understand our salvation is, as Orthodox, we understand it it is a process. The work of God saving us is a process, and he hasn't finished it yet because he has to come at the second coming, and then there will be the great judgment. And so right now that's what we're waiting for. We're waiting for Jesus to come, and we're waiting for that judgment. And so now today is the day of salvation, as the scriptures say, and as we echo in our surfaces and our hymns, um, we are s striving to remind ourselves that that we are seeking to prepare ourselves for Christ to come at any time, and really that becomes a key focus in a lot of what we do during Great and Holy Lint, and especially at the beginning of Holy Week, with the bridegroom services. Where we have those reminders of of that the Lord uh comes in the middle of the night. And so we want to be the one of the blessed who is he who the Lord finds uh waiting. Uh, you know, we don't want to be like the foolish virgins and be caught in unawares and be shut out of the kingdom of heaven. And so this is our time to see, you know, search our heart, see what we haven't brought into conformity to Christ, and strive with his help to be able to bring it more and more. And that's

Fasting Prayer And Almsgiving

SPEAKER_00 4:45

why the fasting has continued. Um and we don't drop those things because we know how valuable those can be. Um that's why the increased prayer and the Christian services are there. The uh the emphasis of offering hospitality in alms is also a concrete way of being able to show and manifest our love for God by loving one another and that call that uh uh Christ is asking us to be able to do. And so I think that that's why for us Great Lint, I don't think we'll ever uh change it and be any different than what we have because what the church has developed is uh something that's proven very, very um beneficial spiritually for the members of the church.

Why Young People Want Challenge

SPEAKER_00 5:32

And in fact, what I see is happening amongst those that are that are coming into the Roman Catholic Church are are those that are Protestants. They're looking at a lot of the things that we're doing, and they actually feel that those things are very beneficial. Um in one of the videos I watched last night that was done very well was saying how a lot of the young people are are leaving some of the big megachurches, and that because they're not going there to be pandered to or to make feel comfortable, they realize that God is asking us to do some um difficult things, but we don't have to do them alone. Uh we can do them with his strength and with it with his power, that some of these practices are practices that go way back in the Old Testament. Uh God gave them to his Old Testament church, he definitely gave them to the New Testament church and to the church today. And so we seek to follow those practices because we see that there really is a benefit to doing

Guidance From A Spiritual Father

SPEAKER_00 6:29

those. Of course, all of those practices we do with some spiritual director direction uh um from the clergy, from our spiritual father.