Origen's homily on Luke 2:33-35 (the marveling of Joseph and Mary, and Simeon's prophecy) defends the Creator-God against Marcionite heretics and reads the 'fall and rising of many' allegorically.
This homily takes as its text Luke 2:33-35, the moment when Joseph and Mary marvel at the things said about the infant Jesus, culminating in Simeon's prophecy that the child is set 'for the falling and the rising up of many within Israel' and that a sword will pierce Mary's soul. Origen first surveys everything that had been reported about Jesus before this point: the shepherds' vision, the angelic announcement, and Simeon taking the child in his arms to speak the Nunc Dimittis. He treats Simeon's oracle as the climactic 'summit' of all the wonder surrounding Jesus.
Origen then pivots to a polemical center of the homily: heretics (he means the followers of Marcion and similar groups, whom he calls people who 'bark against the Creator') use Old Testament texts like 'I will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal' to portray the God of the Law and Prophets as cruel, while exempting the Gospel from the same charge. Origen turns this against them by pointing out that Simeon's very words about Jesus - set for both 'fall' and 'rising' - contain the same structure of severity and mercy found in the Old Testament passage, so consistency requires either condemning both texts or, better, interpreting both rightly.
His own resolution is allegorical and moral: God 'kills' the old, earthly man in each believer and 'brings to life' the new, heavenly one, just as blindness and sight in John 9 refer to Israel's and the nations' spiritual states rather than literal sight. He extends the image through Adam and Eve's opened eyes in Genesis, arguing that true sight and blindness are inward conditions. The homily closes with a personal application: what is evil within a person must fall so that what is good can rise, since Jesus 'cannot bring about a resurrection unless a ruin has gone before it.'
“I announce to you great joy: go and you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.”
— Homily on Luke 16 · read this chapter →
“Behold, this one is appointed for the falling and the rising up of many within Israel, and to be a sign spoken against on every side.”
— Homily on Luke 16 · read this chapter →
“I, he says, will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal; and there is no one who can snatch them from his hands.”
— Homily on Luke 16 · read this chapter →
“I came into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
— Homily on Luke 16 · read this chapter →
“Jesus comes first, for he cannot bring about a resurrection unless a ruin has gone before it.”
— Homily on Luke 16 · read this chapter →
It is a sermon on Luke 2:33-35, the marveling of Joseph and Mary and Simeon's prophecy that Jesus is 'set for the falling and the rising up of many within Israel.' Origen uses this text to defend the Old Testament Creator against heretics who accuse him of cruelty, and to give an allegorical reading of spiritual blindness and sight.
He argues against unnamed heretics, followers of a Marcion-like theology, who use Old Testament sayings such as 'I will kill, and I will make alive' to claim the Creator-God is cruel and separate from the God of Jesus. Origen turns Simeon's 'fall and rising' prophecy about Jesus back against them to show the same pattern applies to the Gospel's God.
He reads it allegorically: those of the nations who did not previously 'see' come to spiritual sight through Christ, while those of Israel who saw before become blind, and each person also has an inward eye of sinful fleshly sense that Jesus came to correct.
Taking the infant in his arms, Simeon says Jesus is 'appointed for the falling and the rising up of many within Israel, and to be a sign spoken against on every side,' and that a sword will pierce Mary's soul, revealing the thoughts of many hearts.
He argues that spiritual resurrection requires a prior 'ruin': the destruction of what is evil within a person, since 'Jesus... cannot bring about a resurrection unless a ruin has gone before it.'
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