St Andrew's Blog - Theology & Life

By Dr Andrew Mellas (Senior Lecturer in Church History and Liturgical Studies)

In the children’s story, ‘The Little Prince’, the fox tells us: “Now here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Of course, the author of this tale, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is drawing upon a Christian tradition that has long spoken of the heart as the deepest faculty of spiritual perception within the human person. Saint Paul’s prayer that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened (πεφωτισμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν)”[1] expresses an eternal truth of Orthodox spirituality...

By Dr Lydia Gore-Jones (Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies)

Every Sunday in church, we hear the dismissal hymn (or the Apolytikion) of the week on the theme of the Resurrection. On the fourth Sunday of Pascha on May 3, 2026, the hymn of the Resurrection was in Tone 3. Everyone could feel the brightness and joyfulness in the tune, but did you hear what the hymn was saying? If, like me, you hear the words again, reread and savour them, and take them to your mind and your heart, you will be truly amazed. Here is the hymn in Greek and in English translation:..