The functional time is cyclical – it is a ritual repetition – which, however, presupposes ascetic struggle and personal mystical intensity, which becomes an endless progress, "beginning from the beginning receiving." Christian time, as it is truly experienced, could be represented as an elevation that, although it approaches its end, extends into infinity to embrace, as if it were a sphere, the entire universe.

This journey towards meeting "the God who draws near" is a rapture that, with its momentum, embraces time, space, the entire world, in order to unite them in the depths of the human heart. There, one encounters, on a cosmological level, the universal dimension of prayer for the “whole Adam,” as St. Sophronius tirelessly emphasizes in his writings.

This experience, however, is not a privilege of the highest mystical states, but it is that of "life in Christ," which all believers live within the liturgical tradition of the Church. The purpose of this study is to show that the period of Great Lent reveals in a special way the mystical character of liturgical time.

As a modification of the ancient preparation of the catechumens for the paschal initiation, we will see that all the constituent elements of Great Lent – both on a hymnographic and structural level – are marked by this mystical and theanthropic seal.