Origen's homily on Luke 2:40-2:2, reading John the Baptist's desert growth and Augustus's census as spiritual signs, not mere history.
Homily on Luke 11 is one of Origen's surviving sermons on the Gospel of Luke, preached to a congregation (he addresses them as "dearest brothers") and covering the span from Luke's report that the child John "grew and was strengthened" through the census of Quirinius that frames the nativity. True to his exegetical method, Origen refuses to let any detail sit as bare narrative: he insists a "simple history" has not been written concerning John, but material meant "for our imitation."
The homily opens by distinguishing two senses of "growth" in scripture - one purely natural, the other spiritual and effortful - and reads John's growth in spirit as the second kind, comparable to Isaac's growth in Genesis. Origen then turns to John's time in the desert, arguing that his conception and birth were already miraculous (the leaping in the womb, Zechariah's prophecy, his father's enforced silence), so his withdrawal into the wilderness to "converse with angels" and be answered by God, as Moses was, fits the same pattern. He treats John's diet of locusts and wild honey as symbolically fitting for one who heralded Christ's first coming.
The homily closes on the census under Caesar Augustus and Quirinius (Cyrinus), anticipating the objection that a Roman administrative detail is spiritually useless. Origen answers that Christ's registration among all humanity in the earthly census prefigures his enrolling believers in "the book of the living," so that whoever believes in him will be "written in heaven." The piece is a compact example of Origen's habit of finding a hidden "mystery" signified beneath every plain statement of the Gospel text.
“In the holy scriptures "to grow" is spoken of in two ways: one, where human will accomplishes nothing; the other, spiritually, where the cause of growing consists in human effort.”
— Homily on Luke 11 · read this chapter →
“His will was always stretching itself toward better things,”
— Homily on Luke 11 · read this chapter →
“For if 'among those born of women there was no one greater than John the Baptist,' and God answered Moses, then he consequently answered John as well, who was greater than Moses”
— Homily on Luke 11 · read this chapter →
“he did not have domestic honey strained by human care, but 'wild honey,'”
— Homily on Luke 11 · read this chapter →
“so that after this registration he might also register, from the world, together with himself, 'in the book of the living,' so that whoever believed in him might afterward be 'written in heaven' with his saints”
— Homily on Luke 11 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon covering Luke's account of John the Baptist growing up in the wilderness through the census of Quirinius that sets the scene for Jesus's birth. Origen treats both episodes as symbolically significant rather than plain history.
Origen says John withdrew to the wilderness, where the air is purer and God more familiar, to devote himself to prayer and converse with angels before his public ministry, comparing this to how God answered Moses in the desert.
He reads the diet symbolically: wild honey, not strained by human care, and locusts, a small creature that scarcely rises from the ground, fit John's role as herald of Christ's humble first coming.
He argues the worldwide registration under Augustus and Quirinius prefigures Christ registering all believers in 'the book of the living,' so that whoever believes in him is later 'written in heaven.'
No. He explicitly says it would be wrong to treat John's growth as 'a simple history... that has nothing to do with us,' insisting the text is given 'for our imitation.'
Commentary on John, Book 1 · Commentary on John, Book 10 · Commentary on John, Book 2 · Commentary on John, Book 4 · Commentary on John, Book 5 · Commentary on John, Book 6 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 10 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 11 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 12 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 13 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 14 · Commentary on Matthew, Book 15