Ezekiel 3:1

(Chapter III, Verse 1) Eat this scroll, and go to the sons of Israel. Unless we eat the open scroll beforehand, we cannot teach the sons of Israel. Finally, even David, after he obtained mercy, said: I will teach the wicked your ways, and the impious will turn to you (Psalm 50:15).

In the scroll of Ezekiel, who is truly a type of the Savior, no other prophet (I mean of major prophets) is called "Son of man." The title is given strictly to Ezekiel. In Ezekiel after almost every twenty or thirty verses it says regularly, "the word of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel." Someone may ask, "Why is that so frequently repeated in the prophecy?" Because the Holy Spirit descended on the prophet but again withdrew from him.

When certain people read the writings of sacred Scripture, upon penetrating its more sublime passages, they tend to despise with a swelling sense of pride the lesser commandments that were given for the weaker ones, and they wish to change them into another meaning. If they rightly understood the lofty things in it, they would not hold even the smallest commandments in contempt, because the divine precepts speak in certain ways to the great, yet in other ways they are suited to the little ones, who through increases of understanding grow as if by certain steps of the mind, and arrive at comprehending greater things. Hence now it is said to the holy prophet: "Son of man, eat whatever you find." Whatever is found in sacred Scripture must be consumed, because both its small things compose a simple life, and its great things build up subtle understanding. It follows: "Eat this scroll, and go speak to the sons of Israel. And I opened my mouth, and he fed me with that scroll." Holy Scripture is our food and drink. Hence even the Lord threatens through another prophet: "I will send a famine upon the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord." He who says that we are worn down by hunger and thirst when his speech is withdrawn, demonstrates that his words are both our food and our drink. But it should be noted that they are sometimes food, sometimes drink. For in more obscure matters that cannot be understood unless they are explained, holy Scripture is food, because whatever is explained so that it may be understood is, as it were, chewed so that it may be swallowed. But in more open matters it is drink. For we swallow drink without chewing. Therefore we drink the more open things by command, because we are able to understand them even without explanation. […]

Thy words were found, and I did eat them, Jer. xv. They must be both well acquainted and much affected with the things of God, that they may speak of them both clearly and warmly, with a great deal of divine light and heat. How this command is inculcated upon the prophet.

), " Eat that thou findest, that which is presented to thee by the hand of Christ." Note, Whatever we find to be the word of God, whatever is brought to us by him who is the Word of God, we must receive it without disputing.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens