"What, then, is the cause," it is said, "of the divine descending to this humiliation, so that belief is wavering, if God--the uncontainable and incomprehensible and unutterable reality, that which is above all glory and all greatness--is mixed with the defilement of human nature, so that his lofty activities is also degraded by admixture with humiliation?"
We are also not at a loss for a God-befitting answer to this. You ask the cause of God being born among men? If you take away the life the benefits that come from God, you would not be able to say by what means you recognise the divine. For from the good things we experience, from these we recognise the Benefactor; for looking at the things that happened, through these we reckon the nature of him who is at work [in them]. If, then, love for man is the characteristic property of the divine nature, you have the reason which you sought, you have the cause of God's presence among men.
For our infirm nature stood in need of a Healer, man in the fall stood in need of Someone to set him upright, he who was deprived of life stood in need of the Giver of Life, he who declined from participation in the good stood in need of him who brings him back to Good, he who was shut up in darkness needed the presence of Light, the captive sought the Redeemer, the one in bondage the Fellow-Struggler, he who was held fast in the yoke of slavery the Liberator; were these small and unworthy things to importune God to visit human nature, since humanity was in so pitiful and wretched a state?
St Gregory the Theologian,
The Great Catechetical Oration, III.13
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