Let this be that place, as sweet as it is terrible, in which Jacob (Gen. 28:11), beholding the Lord leaning upon the ladder, and seeing the angels ascending and descending by it, understood it to be the house of Divinity: where, with his head propped upon a stone prepared for mysteries, he fitted ointment to the causes of things to come; or when, with the homage of the justified sinful woman, the wave of fragrant alabaster drenched the hanging hair of the Mediator who was to suffer: so that what should flow forth, fittingly necessary for the living stones into a spiritual building, might well up from the irrigating fountain of the cornerstone; and thus the sons of Abraham, raised up from stones through the laver, that they might escape the dryness of natural defilement, might grow rich by the gift of the fragrant chrism, grace making them fruitful.
This Jacob saw in spirit while asleep, and performed as a sign when awakened. When from thence the voice of the consecrator cries aloud for us, there the dream of the sleeper keeps watch for us. The ladder indeed which he saw is the steps of human supplication, by which each one, according to his strength, is sent up into the divine ears by the quality of his prayers. And the angels ascend by them, when they extend our vows into heaven; they descend, when they transmit from heaven the things obtained. These assist our prayers, not by the beating of wings, but by the spirit of gifts, for whom to have flown is to have willed.
And among these, Michael the prince claims for himself the chief place, whom Daniel (10:13)—that lofty man of desires, mighty in visions, unraveler of enigmas, expounder of figures—after the fervent fasting of a threefold week, it was too little to have as visible, unless he received him as helper. Wherefore this our Michael too, provoked by the sincerity of the vow, the joyfulness of the place, the devotion of the people, stands present, conferring great things, obtaining the greatest, that he may draw hither the sight of the Divinity by which he is ever illumined.
To whom, since we have learned in many places of the Scriptures that whatever is piously asked for or rightly done reaches its goal through the bearing angels, let us look forward, in the pursuit of acceptable works and wholesome vows, to the blessedness of which we have foreseen in the archangel the bearer.