We ought to be fed by meditation on the Passion of Christ. — As if it were openly said: She is indeed fed by the very contemplation of the divinity, but because her hearers can by no means perceive the secrets of the divinity, they are satisfied by knowing the gore of the crucified Lord. For to lap the blood is to venerate the weak things of the Lord's Passion. Hence it is that the same Paul, who, as we said a little before, had flown to the secrets of the third heaven, said to his disciples: 'For I judged not myself to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified' (1 Corinthians 2:2). As if this eagle openly said:
'I indeed behold from afar my food, the power of His divinity; but to you, still little ones, I give only the blood of His incarnation to be lapped.' For he who, by his preaching, passing over in silence the loftiness of the divinity, instructs weak hearers concerning the blood of the cross alone — what else does he do but offer blood to the nestlings? But because the soul of every holy preacher, stripped of the corruption of the flesh, is straightway led to Him who of His own will fell into death for us and rose from death, it is fitly subjoined of this eagle: