Analyticae Quaestiones & Responsiones de pane vitae

of the Lord, but not the bread that is the Lord.

V. That the Fathers ate and drank the same spiritual meat and drink as we do, he proves with the testimony of the Apostle Paul in the same 26th Tractate on John. Spiritual, certainly the same. For the corporal [food] was different, because they had Manna and we have something else: but the spiritual [food] is the same as ours, though it was for our fathers, not their fathers: to whom we are similar, not those to whom they were similar. And he adds: "And all drank the same spiritual drink." Different for them, different for us: but though the visible form was different, it signified this same thing through spiritual power. For how [could it be] the same drink? They drank, he says, from the spiritual rock that followed them: the rock, however, was Christ. From there comes the bread, from there the drink. Christ is the rock in the sign, the true Christ is in the Word and in the flesh. Shortly after, expounding Christ’s words: "This is therefore the bread that descended from heaven, so that if anyone eats of it, he may not die." But, says Augustine, he who pertains to the power of the sacrament, not he who pertains to the visible sacrament. He who eats INWARDLY, not OUTWARDLY: he who eats in the HEART, not he who presses with the TOOTH. The same.

This is therefore to eat that food, and to drink that drink: to remain in Christ, and to have Him in oneself. And by this, he who does not remain in Christ, and in whom Christ does not remain, undoubtedly does not eat His flesh spiritually, nor drink His blood: although he may carnally and visibly press the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ with his teeth; but rather he eats and drinks the Sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment