Although this manner of speaking first referred to that people, nonetheless we see it now daily fulfilled in our life and profession. For everyone who has first renounced this world and then returns to his former pursuits and his erstwhile desires proclaims that in deed and in intention he is the same as they were, and he says, It was well with me in Egypt.

I fear that there will be found as many such people as we read there were multitudes of sinners in the time of Moses. For although six hundred and three thousand armed men were said to have left Egypt,^[1] no more than two of these entered the Promised Land.^[2] Hence we must strive to take our models of virtue from the few and far between, since, according to that figure of speech in the Gospel, many are said to be called but few are said to be chosen.^[3] Bodily renunciation and removal from Egypt, as it were, will be of no value to us, therefore, if we have been unable to obtain at the same time the renunciation of heart which is more sublime and more beneficial.

Since they dared to prefer the bitterest of Egyptian foods to the heavenly food of manna and preferred the succulent meats of their hostile masters to their own freedom, did they deserve anything else than to have their joy in foods curtailed? They truly deserved to bear the brand of the slavery they had longed for, since a better food—the food of the free—displeased them so.

The rain of manna fed the Jewish people for forty years in the desert. It did not by its customary service cause an increase of sprouts from the earth but streamed on the earth like harvested grains. It took away all the toil of human labor and by its pleasant dew^[1] offered and spread out heavenly produce for the hungry.

These incidents are quite well known from our reading of Exodus, for quails rained down like the heaviest shower, and the Jews received manna to get their fill. But to demonstrate that this was a prefiguration, he spoke not of manna but of the bread of heaven, so that the Lord Savior’s coming could be visualized in this blessing, for he is the living bread which came down from heaven.^[1] The meaning of manna, as was stated at Psalm 77, is What is this?^[2] He disposed of the problem surrounding the name, and with the statement He filled them with the bread of heaven,^[3] he explained the answer to the question about manna, for the Lord of heaven is indicated by the phrase, and the nature of manna is clearly acknowledged.

So, my friends, I said, I shall now show from the Scriptures that God has begotten of himself a certain rational power as a beginning before all other creatures. The Holy Spirit indicates this power by various titles, sometimes the glory of the Lord, at other times Son, or Wisdom, or angel, or God, or Lord or Word. He even called himself Commander-in-chief when he appeared in human guise to Joshua, the son of Nun. Indeed, he can justly lay claim to all these titles from the fact that he performs the Father’s will and that he was begotten by an act of the Father’s will.

But if there are some who have come out of Egypt and, following the pillar of fire and cloud, are entering the wilderness, then he comes down from heaven to them and offers them a small, thin food, like to the food of angels; so that man eats the bread of angels.^[1]

Manna is interpreted as What is this? See whether the very power of the name does not provoke you to learn it, so that when you hear the law of God read in church you may always ask and say to the teachers: What is this? This it is that the manna indicates. Therefore if you want to eat the manna, that is, if you desire to receive the word of God, know that it is small and very fine like the seed of the coriander.

This is the bread that God gave to you to eat. Hear who this bread is: The word, Scripture says, which God has ordained. This then is the ordination of God; this food nourishes the soul of the wise. It illuminates and it sweetens, resplendent with the gleam of truth and soothing, as if with a honeycomb, by the sweetness of different virtues and the word of wisdom. For good words are sweeter than a honeycomb, as it is written in Proverbs.^[1]

That this is heavenly food is demonstrated by the person speaking: I shall rain upon you bread from heaven. Manna is a cause (aition), because God, who waters minds with the dew of wisdom, uses it as an instrument. And manna is a kind of matter (hyle), because souls that see it and taste it are delighted and ask whence it comes, manna which is more splendid that light and sweeter than honey. They can be answered with a chain of quotations from Scripture: This is the bread that the Lord gave to you to eat, and This is the Word of God which God has established or ordained. By this bread the souls of the prudent are fed and delighted, since it is fair and sweet, illuminating the souls of the hearers with the splendor of truth and drawing them on with the sweetness of the virtues.

Nay, rather, the Holy Spirit is not given from a measure but is poured out completely upon the believer. For if the day is born to all equally, and if the sun shines upon all with equal and similar light, how much more does Christ, the Sun and the true Day, bestow equally in his church the light of eternal life with equal measure! We see that the pledge of this equality is celebrated in Exodus, when the manna from heaven fell and, with a prefiguring of the future, showed the nourishment of heavenly bread and the food of the coming Christ. For there, without distinction either of sex or of age, a measure was collected for each equally.

If anyone cannot endure what I have said but still clings to the poverty of worldly things, snatching at the things which undergo diminution, let him call to mind the food of manna. Let him tremble at the example of that punishment. For what happened in that instance, this same result one may now also see in the case of covetous people. But what then happened to them? Worms were bred from their covetousness. This also now happens in their case. For the measure of the food is the same for all. You have but one stomach to fill. Only you who feed luxuriously have more to get rid of. Those who gathered in their houses more than the lawful quantity gathered not manna but more worms and rottenness. Just so both in luxury and in covetousness, the gluttonous and drunken gather not more delicacies but more corruption. Homilies on 1

Moreover in regard to the celebrated sabbath, a careful reader will see that the command, You shall sit each one in your dwellings; let none of you go out from his place on the sabbath day, is an impossible one to observe literally, for no living creature could sit for a whole day and not move from his seat.

The Word of God becomes all these things to each and every one according as the capacity or the desire of the participant requires. In just the same way the manna also, although it was one food, yielded its flavor to each person after his desire.^[1] So he does not offer himself only as bread to those who hunger and as wine to those who thirst, but he presents himself also as fragrant apples to those who crave delights.

Let us also see if we are able to find Quadragesima’s^[1] mystical number somewhere else in the Scriptures. We read that holy Moses fed the children of Israel with heavenly manna in the desert for the space of forty years. Good is the number, then, which always opens heaven. Good is the number, I say, by which Noah’s righteousness is preserved and the children of Israel are fed. For this reason let us also observe this number so that the heavens might be opened to us in order that the rain of spiritual grace might fall upon us and the manna of the spiritual sacraments refresh us. For, after the fashion of our fathers, by this observance of Quadragesima we are both made righteous and nourished: we are made righteous by the washing [of baptism] and nourished by the sacraments [of bread and wine].

Anyway, when the instruction is given to consecrate in a golden vessel the memorial of the food sent down by God from heaven, the gomor, it is written, is a tenth part of three measures. For our purposes, three measures means three sources of judgment: perception of sensible objects; reason, for evaluating sentences, nouns and verbs; and the intellect, for intelligible objects.