Homilies on Luke — Homily 5 (Luke 1:18–23)
Latin source: Origen's Greek homilies on Luke, surviving only in Jerome's Latin translation (c. 391), from the reading text of M. Rauer (ed.), Origenes Werke IX (GCS 35, Leipzig, 1930). This English translation is released into the public domain.Concerning the fact that Zechariah fell silent.
Zechariah the priest, while he offers incense in the temple, is condemned to silence and holds his peace; indeed, he speaks only by nods, and remains mute right up to the birth of his son John. To what does this history point? The silence of Zechariah is the silence of the prophets among the people of Israel. In no way does God speak to them, and "the word, which in the beginning was God with the Father", has passed over to us, and Christ is not silent to us, though among them he is silent even to this day: for which reason also the prophet Zechariah kept silent. For it is most clearly proved from his very words that he was both a prophet and a priest. But what does this mean, which follows: "he was making signs to them" and made up for the loss of his voice by nods? I think that such works are those which, being without speech and reason, differ in nothing from nods. But where reason and speech have gone before and the work has thus followed after, they ought not to be reckoned mere nods, which are adorned with speech and reason. If therefore you see the manner of life of the Jews to be without reason and speech, so that they cannot render a reason for the things they do, understand that what then took place in Zechariah is even now being fulfilled in them as in an image. Their circumcision is like nods. For unless a reason for circumcision be rendered, circumcision is a nod and a mute work. The Passover and the other solemn feasts are nods rather than truth. To this day the people of Israel is deaf and "mute"; for it could not be otherwise than that he should be deaf and "mute" who had cast speech away from himself. And of old indeed Moses said: "but I am ἄλογος (without speech or reason)" — which, though the Latin has rendered it otherwise, can nevertheless be more properly translated: "without speech or reason" —, and after he said this, he received reason or speech, which he had confessed that he did not before possess. But the people of Israel in Egypt, before it received the law, was in a certain way "mute", without speech and reason; then it received speech, of which Moses was an image. This people, therefore, does not now confess what it then confessed in Moses, namely that it is "mute" and ἄλογος, but by nods and silence indicates that it does not have speech and does not have reason. Does it not seem to you to be a confession of foolishness, when none of them can render a reason for the legal precepts and the prophetic oracle? Christ has ceased to be in them, speech has abandoned them, and that has been fulfilled which is written in Isaiah: "the daughter of Zion shall be left like a booth in a vineyard, and like a lodge in a cucumber-field, like a city that is stormed". These being abandoned, salvation has been transferred to the nations, that those others might be stirred up to jealousy. Beholding, therefore, the dispensation and the hidden purpose of God, how Israel has been cast off unto our salvation, we ought to take care lest perhaps those others have been cast out for our sake, and we be worthy of greater punishment — we for whose sake others also have been abandoned, and we have done nothing worthy of God's adoption and of his mercy, who adopted us and reckoned us among his own sons in Christ Jesus: to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.