Joshua 5:12

But see what fruits he first receives in the land of promise: then, it says, "they ate" first "of the fruits" from the region of palms, and "they ate" first "the unleavened bread." You see, therefore, that when we have first departed from the journey of this world, if we rightly follow Jesus, the first thing that meets us is the palm of victory, and, when the "leaven of malice and wickedness" has been cast away, the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" is prepared for us.

But if the law is to be understood according to the letter alone, the children of Israel will without doubt be found — when they were using better things, for they were taking manna from heaven — to have received worse things from the promise, whereas, when the Egyptian foods first failed them, a better food had succeeded, the manna from heaven. And how now will it be thought that, when the better food ceased, a worse succeeded, unless because a greater and truer meaning is grasped in the spiritual understanding than in the text of the letter?

"And Jesus said to them: 'I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.' " He desired first of all to eat the typical Passover with his disciples and thus to reveal the mystery of his passion to the world, so that the judge of the ancient and lawful Passover would emerge and forbid this to be displayed to have pertained to the type of its dispensation by further carnal teaching but would demonstrate instead through the passing shadow that the light of the true Passover has now come. The time and order of Joshua finishing the manna beautifully prefigures this, where it is written: "And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening in the plains of Jericho, and they ate from the fruit of the earth on the next day, unleavened bread from the grain of the land of the same year. And the manna ceased after they ate of the fruit of the earth, nor did the children of Israel use that food any more." For, when Moses died, Joshua restored the people whom he had provided with manna for a time across the Jordan, by which food he himself was also restored, even though he knew and formerly tasted of the fruit of the promised land. Thereafter, he crossed the Jordan, circumcised with knives made of stone and did not take the customary manna for three and one half months, until the day of Passover. In fact, Joshua was ordained leader when Moses died because Christ was incarnated when the law had been corrupted by the traditions of the Pharisees. Joshua fed with and was fed by manna across the Jordan because, until the time of his baptism, the Lord observed the ceremonies of the law and wanted them to be observed by everyone else. After they had crossed the Jordan, Joshua circumcised the people with knives made from stone because the Savior celebrated the grace of baptism with thoughts that the law, in its severity, had been unable to cut off the attractions of faith. And for three and one half years [after his baptism], although provoking gradual movement toward the promised heaven, Christ does not cease to observe the sacraments of the law, as though to be nourished with the customary manna, until, while eating the desired Passover with his disciples at a foreordained time, as morning was breaking, he finally offers the most pure sacrament of his body and blood, consecrated on the altar of the cross for imbuing the faithful, as…