Saint Athanasius (295-373)
Bishop of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church
On the Incarnation of the Word, 8-9 (cf SC 190, p. 288f.)
"He came and took her by the hand, and the little girl arose"
The incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God came to our realm, although he was not far from us before. For no part of Creation is left void of him: he has filled all things everywhere, remaining present with his own Father. But he came in condescension to show us loving-kindness and visit us... He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear it that death should have the mastery— lest the creature should perish, and his Father's handiwork be spent in vain — he took to himself a body no different from ours. For He did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear. For if he had willed merely to appear, he would have been able to effect his divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But he took a body of our kind...
The Word took a body capable of death so that it... might remain incorruptible because of the Word which had come to dwell in it and, from now on, all might be delivered from corruption by the grace of the Resurrection. Whence, by offering to death the body he himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from stain, the Word straightway obliterated death by delivering from death all those who shared his likeness by the offering of that body like theirs.
For it is only right that the Word of God, who is above all and who offered his own temple, his body, for the life of all, should satisfy our debt by His death. And thus he, the incorruptible Son of God, being united with all by a like nature, naturally clothed us all with incorruption by the promise of the resurrection. For the actual corruption in death has no power against us any longer by reason of the Word that has come to dwell among us in his singular body.