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Easter Wishes

Dear Friends of St Andrew's

A short message from St Andrew’s Theological College, on behalf of His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia, our College President and Dean, and all the Faculty, to wish you and your families a spiritually uplifting and Light-filled Easter. Let us focus on the life-giving message of Holy and Great Week, during which the entire Passion of Christ will unfold before us, giving us an opportunity, once again, to receive Him truly into our life! It is a week in which the gift of Christ’s unfading light to come enters human history providing serenity and solace amongst life’s many anxieties as it reveals to us “the certainty that Someone loves us”.

Sermon for the Veneration of the Cross (3rd Sunday of Lent)

By Associate Professor Philip Kariatlis (Sub-Dean)

At the heart of Holy and Great Lent, the Church places before the faithful, ‘the precious and living giving Cross’ of Christ, inviting us all to come before it and to venerate it, which essentially means to revere, to honour, but also to embrace it wholeheartedly and with fervour, in our daily life. On this, the 3rd Sunday of our Lenten journey, we pause to reflect on the mystery of the Cross, not only to be supported and strengthened as we endeavour to complete the forty-day pilgrimage that we began some weeks ago, but also to come to really appreciate its centrality for Lent but, more broadly, for our day-to-day life...

The Liturgical Journey to Pascha: Part Two: Great Lent

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

As with the pre-Lenten period, which part one of this blog post explored, here in part two, we will look at how the hymns we sing during Great Lent invite us to reflect, ponder and pray. Indeed, part one finished with Cheesefare Sunday, but neglected to note what happens on the evening of that Sunday, which is often called the vespers of forgiveness. As we take our first steps of the 40-day Lenten journey, we ask each other for forgiveness. We remember the Gospel from earlier that day, Matthew 6:14–21, which teachers us the forgiveness that is afforded to the faithful by God if they too forgive their neighbour..

The Institution of the Eparchial Synod in Australia: A Theological Appraisal

The year 2024 will go down in history for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia not only for being the centenary celebration since the establishment or ‘birth’ of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia in 1924 under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but also for the fact that in this same year, another achievement of the greatest proportions will have been realised: namely, the Church’s ‘re-birth’ in 2024 through the institution of the Eparchial Synod for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia. The significance of this event for our Church here in the Antipodes cannot be overstated...

The Liturgical Journey to Pascha - Part One: The Pre-Lenten Period

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

The hymns we sing during the pre-Lenten period and during Great Lent invite us to reflect, ponder and pray. These hymns are sacred because they reveal to us the story of salvation. The story of salvation is a familiar one. We know how it begins. We know its twists and turns. We know its heroes and its wrongdoers. And we know how it ends. However, in experiencing the liturgical songs that tell us this story, we do not just listen. We enter this sacred narrative, and we become protagonists in the story that unfolds...

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