Annotation CXL

”And they understood not the word which he spoke to them.” — Luke 2:50

Whether Mary always knew the divinity of [her] Son.

Origen, in homily 20 on Luke, seems to hint that Mary, while Christ was still a boy, did not have full faith of his divinity — for he says thus:

“Then, therefore, they did not understand the word which he spoke to them. And at the same time attend to this: that Joseph and Mary did not yet have full faith. Therefore they could not remain above with him.” I think that Origen, by the phrase “full faith,” understood full knowledge of all the mysteries of the divinity and humanity of Christ — which the Virgin Mary did not yet have at that time, although she held all those [things] which she then knew of Christ with a most certain and unshaken faith. See below, Annotation 185.