The liturgical mode of religious life: phenomenology of sacred experience in ritual practice
Manuscript January 21, 2026 DOI: 10.30853/mns20260011 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that liturgy, understood through the Orthodox tradition, is a ritual of formative action that performs a transcendental function in structuring believers' everyday lives. It contends that liturgical action integrates individual and communal dimensions of religious life, reorganizes temporal and spatial experience, and establishes the conditions of possibility for encountering the sacred within mundane reality. |
Abstract
The aim of the research is the philosophical-phenomenological explication and comprehension of the liturgical mode of religious life as a specific form of everyday religious experience. Drawing on the Orthodox tradition, the article clarifies the understanding of liturgy as a mode of religious life, reconstructs the temporal, spatial, bodily-affective, and communicative structures of liturgical experience, and analyzes the connection between the liturgical year, ascetic practices, and regular participation in worship with the formation of religious identity and the believers’ lifestyle. The scientific novelty of the work lies in interpreting the liturgy as a ritual of formative action that performs a transcendental function in structuring the believer’s everyday life and establishes the conditions of possibility for experiencing the sacred within mundane reality. As a result, it is shown that liturgical action integrates the individual and communal dimensions of religious life, rearranges the experience of time and space, and defines a specific way of life of faith, in which everyday reality is experienced as a potential space for encountering the sacred.