"You ought to consider that in future the marks of rewards [(indicia premiorum)] will reflect [(resultabunt, will reverberate, give off an echo)] in the bodies of the saints [cf. 1 Tm 4.8c] in accordance with the merits of the graces [(secundum merita gratiarum)]. Also, in our days the marks of the affections [(indicia affectus)] show [(demonstrant, are a sign of [this], evident)], as we see clearly in St. Francis: the marks of Christ's Passion [(indicia passionis Christi)] were in [his body], because he was intensely affected by the Passion of Christ. Likewise, the marks of mercy [(indicia misericordie)] reflect [(resultant, reverberate, give off an echo)] in St. Nicholas, for 'oil dripped from his tomb' as a sign that he was a man of great mercy. Dt 32.13: 'So that he may cause honey to flow from the rock, and oil from the hardest stone.' That belongs to a king."
Thomas Aquinas, Academic sermon 16 (Inveni David; sermon on the Feast of St. Nicholas, the sixth of December), 2.4 (The academic sermons, Fathers of the church, Medieval continuation 11, trans. Mark-Robin Hoogland, C.P. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 240). I was put onto this by Louis-Jacques Bataillon, O.P., "Les stigmates de saint François vus par Thomas d'Aquin et quelques autres prédicateurs dominicains," Archivum franciscanum historicum 90 (1997): 342-343 (341-347).
Hoogland, following Bataillon, traces the phrase "'oil dropped from his tomb'" to the ninth "responsory from the [Dominican] night office [i.e. Matins] of the Feast of St. Nicholas. This legendary oil is called the 'manna of St. Nicholas'" (240n32).
1 Tim 4:8: "nam corporalis exercitatio ad modicum utilis est pietas autem ad omnia utilis est promissionem habens vitae quae nunc est et futurae" (RSV: "for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it hold promise for the present life and also for the life to come").
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