Virtues: Angels of Grace, Miracles, and Cosmic Power
Leonardo da Vinci, "The Annunciation" (c. 1472–1475, Uffizi Gallery, Florence) — the moment when divine power entered the natural world through angelic mediation. The Virtues are the order associated with the great miracles that rupture the ordinary boundary between the celestial and the terrestrial. There is a moment in every great story of the sacred when the boundary between heaven and earth becomes permeable — when something impossible happens, when the laws of nature are suspended or transcended, when a light breaks through from beyond the ordinary world and changes everything it touches. These are the moments of grace : unexpected, unearned, overwhelming. And behind them, according to the celestial tradition, stand the Virtues — the angelic order whose particular gift is the concentration and transmission of divine power into the created world. The Virtues occupy the second position in the second sphere of the angelic hierarchy — between the Dominions above them...