The Virtues — Dynameis in Greek, the plural of the same word translated 'mighty works' or 'miracles' in the Gospels — are the second order of the second angelic sphere. Their name signals their function: they are the angelic channels through which the power of God flows into the visible world. Patristic tradition assigns to them the working of miracles, the strengthening of the faithful in trial, and the inspiration that lifts saints and martyrs to acts of supernatural courage.
Pseudo-Dionysius calls the Virtues 'a certain powerful and unshakeable virility, welling forth into all their godlike energies.' They do not act on their own initiative but transmit, with unwavering fidelity, the divine strength they receive from the Dominions above them. In the medieval Western tradition, they were associated particularly with the moments where heaven visibly breaks into the natural order — healings, deliverances, providential rescues.
The Virtues are also connected to the celestial bodies and the regular operations of creation. Augustine, in De Trinitate, allows that the regular movements of the natural world are in some sense angelic ministrations — and later Latin theology placed this work especially within the order of the Virtues, who maintain the strength and stability by which the world endures.
Christ's miracles in the Gospels — healings, exorcisms, the multiplication of bread — are not the work of the Virtues but the work of the One they serve. Yet the order itself bears witness to a creation in which the supernatural is never absent: the same power that raised Christ from the dead is the power the Virtues serve, channel, and never possess in themselves.