After the sea came a three-day journey. When the people camped at a certain place, the water they found at first proved undrinkable because of its bitterness. But when the wood was put into it, the water became pleasant to drink for those who were thirsty.
The story corresponds to what happens in life. To someone who has left behind the pleasures of Egypt, which he served before crossing the sea, a life separated from pleasure seems difficult and unpleasant at first. But if the wood is cast into the water, the life of virtue becomes sweeter and more refreshing than anything that delights the senses through pleasure. In the higher meaning, casting in the wood means receiving the mystery of the resurrection, which began through the wood—and by “wood” you surely understand the cross. Hope for the things to come is what makes this life sweet.
The next stopping place on the journey, rich with palm trees and springs, gives the travelers rest from their labor. There are twelve springs of clear and delightful water and seventy palm trees, large and tall, raised to their height by time. What do we find here as the story continues in order? The mystery of the wood, through which the water of virtue becomes drinkable for those who thirst, leads us to the twelve springs and the seventy palm trees—that is, to the teaching of the Gospel.
In this Gospel teaching the twelve apostles are the twelve springs, for the Lord chose that number for this work and caused the word to flow through them. One of the prophets even proclaimed beforehand the grace that would flow from the apostles when he said, “In the churches bless God the Lord from the springs of Israel.” The seventy palm trees are the apostles appointed throughout the whole inhabited world in addition to the Twelve, equal in number to the palms named in the story.
But I think we should hurry on with our journey through the argument. From the few examples already given, those willing to work carefully can readily interpret the remaining encampments. The encampments may be understood as virtues: the person following the pillar of cloud advances from one to the next, camps there, and rests. So I will pass over the intermediate stopping places and recall the wonder at the rock. Its nature was hard and solid, yet it became drink for the thirsty when its hardness dissolved into the softness of water.
There is no difficulty in fitting the sequence of the story to the higher interpretation. The person who left the Egyptian dead in the water, tasted the sweetness brought by the wood, drank deeply from the apostolic springs, and rested beneath the shade of the palms is now able to receive God. For the rock, as the Apostle says, is Christ. To unbelievers He is dry and hard; but if someone brings near the staff of faith, He becomes drink for the thirsty and flows into those who receive Him. For He says, “I and my Father will come and make our dwelling with him.”
Another point should not pass without notice. Only after crossing the sea, after the water has been sweetened for those traveling the road of virtue, after the pleasant rest among the springs and palms, and after drinking from the rock do the provisions brought from Egypt finally run out completely. Once no foreign food brought from Egypt remains, food flows down from above. It is at once varied and of one kind: its appearance is uniform, but its quality contains variety, becoming for each person what suits the particular form of his desire.
What, then, do we learn? A person must cleanse himself through all these purifications from the Egyptian and foreign way of life, emptying the sack of his soul of every food of vice prepared by the Egyptians. Only then can he receive with a pure soul the food that descends from above. No sowing or farming produced it for us. It is bread already prepared, unsown and unplowed, descending from above yet found upon the earth.
Surely you understand the true food through the riddle of the story: the bread that came down from heaven is not something without a body. How could something without a body become food for a body? What is not without a body must be a body. Yet the body of this bread was produced by neither plowing nor sowing. The earth remained as it was and was found full of this divine food, of which the hungry partake. Through this wonder they are taught beforehand the mystery concerning the Virgin.
This uncultivated bread, then, is also the Word. Its power adapts itself in many forms to the different capacities of those who eat it. It knows how to be not only bread, but also milk, meat, vegetables, or whatever kind of food is suitable and pleasing to the one receiving it. The divine Apostle Paul teaches this when he sets such a table before us: he makes the word solid, meaty food for the more mature, vegetables for the weaker, and milk for those who are still infants.