Homilies on Luke — Homily 19 (Luke 2:40–49)
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.Again, concerning what is written: "But the boy grew and was strengthened", up to the place where he questions the elders in the temple.
Since some who seem to believe the holy Scriptures deny the divinity of the Savior, as though for the glory of the almighty God, it seems just to me that they should be taught from the authority of those very Scriptures that something divine came into a human body, and not only into a human body, but also into a human soul. Yet, if we attend carefully to the meaning of the Scriptures, that soul had something more than the rest of human souls. For every human soul, before it comes to virtue, is defiled by vices. But the soul of Jesus was never stained with the filth of sin. Indeed, before he reached the twelfth year of his age, the Holy Spirit writes concerning him in the Gospel of Luke: "But the boy grew and was strengthened and was filled with wisdom". This human nature does not admit, that one should be filled with wisdom before twelve years. It is one thing to have a part of wisdom, another to be filled with wisdom. Let us not doubt, therefore, that something divine appeared in the flesh of Jesus, and something beyond not only man, but beyond every rational creature as well. And "he grew", it says. For "he had humbled himself, taking the form of a servant", and by the same power by which "he had humbled himself", he grows. He had appeared weak, because he had taken up a weak body, and for that reason he is again strengthened. The Son of God "had emptied himself", and therefore he is again filled with wisdom. "And the grace of God was upon him". Not when he came to adolescence, not when he was teaching openly, but while he was still a little child, he had the grace of God; and just as all things in him had been marvelous, so also his childhood was marvelous, that the wisdom of God might be fulfilled. "And so his parents went according to custom to Jerusalem to the solemn day of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old". Observe carefully, that before he was twelve years old, he was being filled with the wisdom of God and with the other things that are written of him. When therefore, as we have said, he was twelve years old, and the days of the solemnity had been completed according to custom, and his parents were returning, "the boy remained in Jerusalem and his parents did not know it". And here understand something more sublime than human nature undergoes. For he did not simply "remain" while his parents were ignorant of where he was; but just as it is written in the Gospel of John, when the Jews were lying in wait for him and he slipped away out of their midst and did not appear, so also now I think that the boy remained in Jerusalem and that his parents were ignorant of where he had remained. Nor let us wonder that they are called parents, of whom the one merited the name because of the childbirth, the other because of his service to the mother and the father. There follows: "sorrowing we were seeking you". I do not think that they sorrowed for this reason, because they supposed the boy had strayed or perished; nor could it happen that Mary, who knew that she had conceived of the Holy Spirit, who had heard both the angel speaking and the shepherds hastening and Simeon prophesying, should fear that she might lose the boy through his wandering off. Remove this opinion especially from Joseph, to whom it had been commanded by the angel that he should take the boy and go to Egypt, who had heard: "do not fear to take Mary your wife; for that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit". It could never come to pass that he should dread as lost the infant whom he had known to be divine. The sorrow and the seeking of the parents sounds like something other than the simple reader understands. Just as you, if ever you read the Scriptures, seek in them the meaning with a certain sorrow and torment—not that you should judge the Scriptures to have erred or to contain something amiss, but because they hold within a word and reason of truth, and you are unable to find what is true: so also they were seeking Jesus, lest perhaps he had withdrawn from them, lest, leaving them, he had migrated to other things and—what I think more likely—lest he had returned to the heavens, intending, when it should please him, to descend again. "Sorrowing", therefore, they were seeking the Son of God. And when they sought him, they did not find him "among their kinsfolk". For human kinship could not contain the Son of God. They did not find him "among their acquaintances", because the divine power was greater than mortal acquaintance and knowledge. Where, then, do they find him? "In the temple"; for there the Son of God is found. If ever you too shall seek the Son of God, seek first the temple, hasten thither, there you will find Christ, the Word and the wisdom, that is, the Son of God. But because he was a little one, he is found "in the midst of the teachers", sanctifying and instructing them. Because he was a little one, he is found "in the midst" not teaching them, but "questioning", and this in accordance with the duty of his age, that he might teach us what befits children, however wise and learned they be, namely that they should rather hear their masters than desire to teach, and should not vaunt themselves with vain display. He was questioning, I say, the masters, not that he might learn something, but that in questioning he might instruct. For from one fountain of teaching flows both to question and to answer wisely; and it belongs to the same knowledge to know what you should ask and what you should answer. It was fitting that the Savior should first become a master of learned questioning, that afterward he might respond to questions according to the reason and word of God: to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.