Worship as Ascetic Experience and Facilitator of Unity in Maximus's Mystagogy

Abstract

precis: In his Mystagogy , Maximus the Confessor explored the ritual space and action of the church, especially how liturgical progression through them both reflects and realizes spiritual progress. In this framework, Maximus presented a picture of the church's shared prayer as an ascetic experience that both spiritually transforms the individual and creates unity among its participants. Such unity is not merely formal or performative but, rather, is actualized though a self-forgetting that occurs when participants willingly attune to a common worship and, in love, make the church's prayer their own. Thus, the Mystagogy presents shared prayer as a type and even a prolepsis of the willing and loving surrender of the self in the eschaton.