The Archangels and the Incarnation

Are they about to exercise authority in administering, as God is able to have? If these do not even administer from themselves or by their own power, the matter itself is a self-evident proof of a certain division. Because you commanded to act rashly and without investigation regarding the rebuke and the accusation, merely according to the word in common, and not regarding the matter itself.

For if others should happen to say that God the Father administers and is good, it is not proper for us to say the opposite. Let me say something else to you: 'Look lest one says that the one who administered to the centurion, the Holy of Holies, the Savior, spoke of the centurion; for by using this name, the Scripture appears to be hidden with much expression and divinity regarding him, in order to announce in the economy as a Son the Father's will. For he did not say by name, as he is wont to say: Michael, Gabriel, or such-and-such.'

What, then, could anyone reasonably blame among all our words? And what should they rebuke in one who possesses nothing but the duty to be straight in the orthodox faith? And how could it not be worthy of belief, that the Holy Spirit administers royally or divinely, while the angels administer liturgically or diaconically? How difficult, then, it is, as it is said, to be a 'shouter.'

Just as for one who is not above governing, so it is difficult to teach; for to one in whom the grace of the Divine Spirit, working salvation together with the Father and the Son with men, is not present, nor is there found the safety of knowing, and the response given from the knowledge of faithful men, even within the riddles of the oracles, and to whom there is no flow of speech without contentious, dialectical, and various preconception.

But I know clearly, O well-pleasing ones and angels of God dwelling in the heavenly light, that you yourselves, as blameless and perfect, were not offended by the things said by me, on account of the angels who are like you according to nature, not according to the praise of opinion; those by whom from the beginning rebuke followed, as also those who seem to you most unbelieving toward the struggle for the truth. For the word is mine concerning the Divine Spirit, who enlightens all things and is zealous for the divine things for the creatures of the Father and His only-begotten Son...

You are family, having sanctified both yourselves and being glory-shared by you together with the Father and the Son through the Trisagion hymn. Rather, you also partook of this Spirit of the one and only hypostasis of God, having not spoken aloud of Him to me. And you perhaps wished to celebrate in this part of the book, through an excess of your goodwill, that the words spoken by many and now by me concerning the Septenary and the consubstantial Trinity should not ever be subject to silence, and that all men should spend the time from the facts toward such a hypothesis.

Therefore, because of this, by the judgment of the Most High: you, O holy Michael, were chosen to rule the 76 incorporeal hosts and were honored as if by a belt, and you exist as a certain fragrance of the all-ruling, all-pure, and compassionate Trinity; and you, O holy Gabriel, were chosen to minister to the mystery of the ineffable economy, as a faithful and constant one. One is honored by another with a God-given gift, such as not even others have, and such as not even we have; but even we have such as not even you have.

For the God Word became man, not through sinful angels, but through men in sin, unchangeably, unmixedly, without sin, ineffably, as He knew and willed, from the Virgin and according to her flesh, and became all of us, remaining what He was and is and will be, one and the same. 'For one,' He says, 'is the holy one, one is the Lord Jesus Christ unto the glory of God the Father' (1 Cor 8:6). And thus, as He ascended from earth to the heavens, the second coming shall come, with myriads of myriads of blessed angelic phalanxes ministering to Him, and He will yet judge and act according to His philanthropy.

Therefore, after the churches and houses, the pleasant places named after your appellation, O pleasing company of archangels, were established not only in cities, but also in narrow places, privately, in houses and in fields, adorned with gold and silver or even ivory; and men, even to the more remote places where they are lodged, having the pleasant places thrust forward as if they had attained a magistracy, do not hesitate to take a sea, or if necessary, a long road of many sufficient days.