[Sermones de eucharistiae sacramento]

...and for the incorruption of a good life, this food is valid. Song of Solomon 5: "My beloved is to me a bundle of myrrh; he shall abide between my breasts." For just as myrrh preserves the body incorrupt, so the body of the Lord, taken piously, [preserves] the hearts. Ambrose: "Consider whether the bread of the angels, that is, the manna of the Jews, or the body of Christ is more excellent; that one was subject to corruption, this one is alien to all corruption, and whoever tastes it religiously will not be able to feel corruption."

The third reason of the wisdom of God, by which the Lord gives His body to man as food, is the condition of human nature, which is a rational creature joined to a body. A rational creature can be considered in three ways, and according to this, it needs a triple food. First, the rational creature is considered according to that which is incorporeal and purely spiritual, like the angelic nature. Secondly, as it is joined to a body, as the dissimilar to the dissimilar, namely spirit to flesh. Thirdly, according to how these two natures, namely body and soul, are joined in individual persons of men by familiar society and wondrous love. But in whichever way of these three the rational creature is considered, it needs food appropriate to its condition. For considered in the first way, namely as it is incorporeal and purely spiritual like the angelic nature, it requires according to its condition food by which it may live and subsist: the eternal Word of God, which is according to itself incorporeal, which is Wisdom. Tobit 12: "I use an invisible food and drink which cannot be seen by men." Also in Ecclesiastes 1: "The tree of life is the wisdom of God," and the fountain of wisdom is the Word of God on high, refreshing, namely, the angels in the heavens.

Secondly, considered as a rational creature joined to a body, like the dissimilar to the dissimilar, namely spirit to flesh, the precious to the vile, according to the condition of both natures, it needs both foods appropriate to itself but dissimilar. Because the spirit [needs] spiritual [food] in the manner of an angel; the body [needs] corporeal [food] in the manner of a beast. First, Psalm 77: "Man ate the bread of angels." 1 Corinthians 10: "Our fathers all ate the same spiritual food." Wisdom 9: "If anyone were perfect among the children of men, if your wisdom should flee from him, he shall be reckoned as nothing," as if he who lacked the spiritual food, which is the wisdom of God, would fail in spiritual life. Ecclesiastes 15: "He fed him with the bread of life and intelligence, and gave him the water of wholesome wisdom to drink." Regarding the second, 2 Samuel 12: "A certain poor man had one little ewe lamb, eating of his bread." Ecclesiastes 39: "The beginning of the necessity of life for man: milk and bread, honey and ewes and oil; all these things shall be turned to good for the holy and to evil for the impious." Regarding both, Deuteronomy 8, Matthew 4: "Not in bread alone does man live, but in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." Augustine: "Just as the soul is the life of the body but does not vivify it without corporeal food, that is, without the Word of God, and thus this and that nature of man, as they are dissimilar to each other, had dissimilar food and ate in an alien mode and far apart from each other."