Advent with Origen
Part 3: Receiving the kisses of the Word’s light and insights
Origen of Alexandria, the man who “gave his heart to the divine Word,” is the preeminent theologian of the early Church’s Logos theology, and therefore our theological guide this Advent. Continuing our reflection on his mystical theology, we move from the purgative stage to the illuminative stage. It is the Word Himself who comes to dwell in each Christian soul. He enlightens her and teachers her more and more about Himself and to expand her capacity for complete union with Him.
Every time the Christian soul practices any virtue, the Word, already present in her, is born anew. She grows in likeness to the Word because “Christ is all virtue and every virtue.”[1] He is perfectly righteous, prudent, courageous, etc. Similarly, when the soul “puts off the old nature” with its vicious practices, she is “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:9-10). Origen notes that just as there is a range of artistic skill for sculptures and paintings, individuals can have various degrees of perfection for the image of God in them. When, “with a pure heart, having become imitators of God,” they grow in the Word’s pattern of righteousness, courage, wisdom, piety, and all the virtues, the image of Christ is perfected within them.[2]
But this growth in likeness is always God’s initiative. Origen stresses that the Word reaches out to each individual and tenderly adapts Himself to each person’s starting point. Whether from slow-wit or moral failings, each soul has an individual capacity to receive the inspirations of the divine Logos. Origen reminds his readers that while Jesus was on earth, He adjusted His self-revelation according to His followers’ capacities. For example, “only Peter, James, and John . . . had the capacity to see his glory” in the Transfiguration.[3] Then atop a mountain, He shared the beatitudes with His disciples; “lower down the mountain,” He healed some illness.[4] These various altitudes on the mountain symbolize different levels of revelation according to what each person could receive.
Because of individual capacities, the Son reveals himself through a multitude of Christological titles, for example, Light, Resurrection, Way, Door, Shepherd, and King.[5] Each soul connects with a different aspect of the Logos’ titles. For example, “even those who do not hasten to reason (the Logos), but like sheep have a weakness and gentleness apart from all accuracy and reason, so He is the Shepherd.”[6] Christ does not demean these “weak and gentle” souls. Rather, as Truth, Life, and Resurrection, His “brightness falls softly and gently on [the] tender and weak eyes of mortal man and little by little trains and accustoms them, as it were, to bear the light in its clearness.”[7] He elevates them and makes them worthy of Himself, worthy to receive more and more of His self-gift. The Song of Songs images this gift as the Bridegroom’s kiss. And Origen explains that the Father understands the right time and capacity of each soul to receive the kisses of the Word’s light and insights.[8]
In the illuminative stage, it is the Logos’ mission to expand the soul’s capacity so she can receive more of God. Christ fills each of the soul’s faculties with Himself. Origen is famous for explaining these faculties as the spiritual five-senses. Because he captures this notion so masterfully, we must quote him in full:
Christ becomes each of [the following] things in turn, to suit the several senses of the soul. He is called the true Light, therefore, so that the soul’s eyes may have something to lighten them. He is the Word, so that her ears may have something to hear. Again, He is the Bread of life, so that the soul’s palate may have something to taste. And in the same way, He is called the spikenard or ointment, that the soul’s sense of smell may apprehend the fragrance of the Word. For the same reason He is said also to be able to be felt and handled, and is called the Word made flesh, so that the hand of the interior soul may touch concerning the Word of life. But all these things are the One, Same Word of God, who adapts Himself . . . and so leaves none of the soul’s faculties empty of His grace.[9]
As the soul progresses on her spiritual journey, she needs internal supports. The Word floods her with grace so that she can perceive Him in every spiritual way and continue to follow after Him.
When each internal sense is completely filled with Christ, the Logos orders the classic “faculties of the soul”: intellect, will, and emotions. We can observe a wonderful example of how the Word is involved in this process through Origen’s own life. Because of interpersonal misunderstanding, and filled with emotional anguish, he had to leave his hometown of Alexandria.[10] But he perceived the Logos (Word and Reason) calling him “to save the higher part in him” and “direct the storm” that would overwhelm his soul.[11] In other words, the divine Reason called to his intellect to still his fiery emotions and will. Through patience, he did “recover [his] calm,” and the “many fiery darts” lost their edge against him.[12] Since mankind’s rational power participates in the Logos, this highest faculty should order the others. Like Origen’s experience, all souls can allow the divine Word to order their unruly passions by the rule of reason.
Our discussion of the illuminative way culminates with spiritual intellectual growth. Here the intellectual, “highest part of the soul,” does not simply govern lower faculties, but grows in seeing divine realities—“illumination.” When Origen speaks of Christ as Light, he touches on deep Trinitarian theology and creation itself. Christ “brightens the higher parts of men” [their intellects], and “is the light of the intellectual world, that is to say, of the reasonable souls”[13] Origen loves to meditate on this connection between Christ as the Logos and all rational beings as “logoi” (the plural of logos). Rational creatures (angels and humans) partake in a unique way with the Logos.[14] When teaching about God creating the world, Origen emphasizes how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit create everything together. But he also appropriates different aspects of creation to each person in the Trinity. The “special activity of God the Father” is to give natural life, the “special ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ” is to “confer the natural gift of reason . . . beyond mere existence,” and the “grace of the Holy Spirit” is to sanctify creatures by grace.[15] Therefore, the angels and humans are rational precisely because of their participation in the Logos.
When Christ enlightens rational souls, they take on his own light, as Jesus tells His disciples, “You are the light of the world” (Mt. 5:14). These radiant intellectual souls have a great dignity because they, in turn, can illumine other souls who are not strong enough to “receive the solar beams of Christ.”[16] But these “other souls” can truly be filled by the light reflected by the former souls’ illumination.
And how does the intellect grow in higher knowledge? Contrary to his Gnostic contemporaries who thought higher “gnosis” was for select souls only, Origen emphasized that the eternal Logos comes to perfect everyone’s understanding.[17] When this Word visits mere “uneducated Christian[s],” God’s wisdom working in them confounds even the greatest philosophers (cf. 1 Cor. 1:27).[18] God’s grace, which exceeds the capacity of everyone’s human nature, leads each Christian deeper into divine mysteries.
Origen envisions this truth through the scene of the maidens running after the fragrance of the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs (Song 1:3-4). They “ingraft [the Word] into their minds and understandings.”[19] And unlike uninstructed souls who only recognize Christ’s physical birth and death,[20] with the fragrance of the Bridegroom, they “have grasped at last the reason for His [Incarnation], the motives of the Redemption and Passion, and the love whereby He, the Immortal, went even to the death of the cross for the salvation of all men.”[21] Christ’s reasons, motives, and love are the deeper divine mysteries that God wants to reveal to all. The maidens are like John the Beloved disciple, who leaned on Christ’s breast at the Last Supper. Everyone is invited to repose on Jesus’ heart and so seek “the inward meaning of his teaching, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hid in Christ Jesus” (Col. 2:3).[22] To pursue these immeasurable riches, God implants a longing in souls. He fans this desire into flame so that souls are never satisfied but always press on with eager desire toward radiant divine truths until they can rest in union with the Beloved Truth.[23]
By Sr Angela Marie OP (Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia Nashville - based in Elgin).
[1] Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A.S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 121, 43; Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 125.
[2] Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), VIII.17-18.
[3] Origen, Contra Celsum, II.64.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Roberts-Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Fathers), accessed May 6, 2021,
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/origen.html., I.23.
[6] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, I.29.
[7] Origen, On First Principles (Peri Archon), trans. G.W. Butterworth (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2013), I.2.7.
[8] Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. R.P. Lawson, in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, vol. 26, ed. Johannes Quasten and Joseph C. Plumpe (New York: Ramsey, 1956),accessed June 20, 2021. https://ia803107.us.archive.org/30/items/origen_202001/Origen.pdf, I.1.
[9] Ibid., II.9.
[10] Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 22-23; Joseph W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-century Church (Southampton: John Knox Press, 1983), 15-16. Although Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria respected Origen’s teaching and appointed him as head of the catechetical school in his diocese, in 230 AD he expelled Origen from the diocese. Bishop Demetrius was upset for two main reasons. After Bishop Theoctistus of Caesarea invited Origen to preach in a church in Palestine, Bishop Demetrius heard of it and objected, since Origen was not a priest. Then when Bishop Theoctistus ordained Origen, Demetrius said as Origen’s local bishop, he needed to grant that permission.
[11] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John VI.1.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., I.25.
[14] Ibid., II.3.
[15] Origen, On First Principles (Peri Archon), I.III.7.
[16] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John I.25.
[17] Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, trans Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 93.
[18] Origen, Contra Celsum, VII.44.
[19] Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, I.4.
[20] de Lubac, 101.
[21] Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, I.4.
[22] Ibid., I.2.
[23] Origen, On First Principles (Peri Archon), II.11.4.
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