Homilies on Luke — Homily 33 (Luke 4:23–27)
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 what is written: "You will surely say to me this parable", and so forth, up to the place where he says: "but none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian".
As far as Luke's account is concerned, Jesus had not yet stayed in Capernaum, nor is he described as having done any sign there — indeed, in a place where he had not been. But before he came to Capernaum, it is signified that he had been in his own homeland, that is, in Nazareth, and he speaks to his fellow citizens: "You will surely say to me this parable: Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do here also in your own homeland". From this I think that something of a mystery lies hidden in the present passage, and that Nazareth went before as a type of the Jews, Capernaum as a type of the Gentiles. And so Jesus, knowing that he would have no honor in his own homeland — neither he himself, nor the prophets, nor the apostles — was unwilling to preach there, but preached among the Gentiles, lest it be said to him by the men of his own homeland: "You will surely say to me this parable: Physician, heal yourself". For there will be a time when the people of the Jews will say: "Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum" — the signs and portents among the Gentiles — "do also among us in your own homeland"; what you have shown to the whole world, show to us also; preach your word to your people Israel, that at least, "when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then all Israel may be saved". For this reason it seems to me that the Savior answered the Nazarenes who questioned him consequently and in due order: "no prophet is accepted in his own homeland". And I think that what is said is more true according to the sacred meaning than according to the letter. Granted that Jeremiah too was not accepted in Anathoth his homeland, and Isaiah, whatever his homeland was, and the rest of the prophets; but it seems to me better to understand it thus, that we should say the homeland of all the prophets was the people of the circumcision, and that this people did not receive the prophets and their prophecies, whereas the nations, which had been far from the prophets and had no knowledge of them, received the prophecy of Jesus Christ. "No prophet" therefore "is accepted in his own homeland", that is, among the people of the Jews. But we, who were strangers to the covenant and foreigners to the promises, have received the prophets with our whole heart, and we "have Moses and the prophets" preaching about Christ more than they do, who, from the fact that they did not receive Jesus, did not receive either those who announced concerning him. Hence to what he had said — "no prophet is accepted in his own homeland" — he adds another thing also: "for in truth I say to you, that there were many widows in the days of Elijah in Israel, when heaven was shut up for three years and six months". What he says is this: Elijah was a prophet and was among the people of the Jews; but when he was about to do something wonderful, although there were many widows in Israel, he left them and came "to the widow in Sarepta of Sidon", to a Gentile woman, unfolding a figure of a thing to come — that, when the people of Israel was seized "not with hunger for bread nor with thirst for water, but with hunger for hearing the word of God", he came to the widow, of whom the prophet also bears witness, saying: "many are the children of the deserted woman, more than of her who has a husband", and, when he had come, he multiplies her bread and her food. You were the widow in Sarepta of Sidon, from whose borders "the Canaanite woman comes forth" and desires that her daughter be healed and, on account of her faith, deserved to receive what she asked. "There were therefore many widows among the people of Israel, but to none of them was Elijah sent, except to the widow woman in Sarepta". But he speaks also another thing pertaining to the same sense: "there were many lepers in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, except Naaman the Syrian", who assuredly was not of Israel. Consider how up to the present day there are many lepers in "Israel according to the flesh"; see, on the contrary, those drenched with the squalor of leprosy being cleansed by the spiritual Elisha, our Lord and Savior, through the sacrament of baptism, and it being said to you: "rise and go into the Jordan and wash, and your flesh will be restored to you". Naaman rose and went, and having washed he fulfilled the mystery of baptism, "and his flesh became like the flesh of a child". Of what child? Of him who has been born in Christ Jesus "in the washing of regeneration": to whom is glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.