The Hard Sayings of Christ & His Saints: How Should We Respond?

This extended podcast seeks to address the teachings of our Lord and His Saints that have the potential to create a stumbling-block on our spiritual path, and how we can view them in the context of the relationship with the spiritual father and our individual path of purification. Our review will include the command to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, of adultery including lust in one’s heart, and of the many references to the narrow path, ascetic self-denial, abstinence and fasting which seem offensive or overly restrictive to modern man, as well events from Acts, Church history and the lives of the saints which some find hard to accept. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? (Jn 6:60) Beholding herself in chastity, the holy one spake boldly unto Gabriel: The strangeness of thy words seemeth hard to my soul to receive; (The Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos