All those who ate that bread [manna] died in the desert, but this food which you receive, this “living bread which came down from heaven,” furnishes the energy for eternal life. Whoever eats this bread “will not die forever,” for it is the body of Christ. … That manna was subject to corruption if kept for a second day. This is foreign to every corruption. Whoever tastes it in a holy manner shall not be able to feel corruption. For them water flowed from the rock. For you blood flows from Christ. Water satisfied them for the hour. Blood satisfies you for eternity.
What we eat, what we drink, the Holy Spirit expresses to you elsewhere, saying; “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Blessed is the one who trusts in him.” Christ is in that sacrament, because the body is Christ’s. So the food is not corporeal but spiritual.
And did all eat the same spiritual meat. Not, as Calvin supposes, the same as we, as though Christians and Hebrews alike feed, not on the Real Body of Christ, but on the typical.
You will say, perhaps, that S. Augustine (tract25 in Johan.) and S. Thomas explain it to be the same as we eat. I reply: They understand "the same" by analogy, for the Hebrews received typically what we receive really. But this is beside the meaning of the Apostle, who understands the same to refer, not to us but to themselves. All the Hebrews , whether good or bad, ate the same food, that is the same manna. This is evident from the context, "But with many of them God was not well pleased," that is to say, that though all ate the same manna, drank of the same water from the rock, yet all did mot please God. As, then, they had one baptism and one spiritual food, so too have we; and as, notwithstanding, they were not all saved, but many of them perished, so is it to be feared that many of us may perish, althoug...
All eat the same spiritual food, to wit, the manna, which seemed to come from heaven, and was a figure of the eucharist, the spiritual food of our souls.
All drank the same spiritual drink, and.rock that followed them, by which is understood the stream of water, that came miraculously out of the rock struck by Moses, and which is said to have followed them, because it ran plentifully through their camp.
And the rock was Christ, a figure of Christ; for all these things (ver. 11.) happened to them in figure. (Witham)
The divine apostle also, in calling the Lord “spiritual food and drink,” suggests that he knows that human nature is not simple, but that there is an intelligible part mixed with a sensual part and that a particular type of nurture is needed for each of the elements in us—sensible food to strengthen our bodies and spiritual food for the wellbeing of our souls. .
