Filled with pity, in his love for mankind, God became incarnate in Mary

On the subject of the Incarnation, I believe that God the Word, the only-begotten Son of the Father, who, before all centuries and ages, was born in the impassibility of the same God and Father, took pity, in his love of men, on our fallen nature, and by his own volition, by the will of God who begot him, and with the divine approval of the Spirit, without leaving the bosom of his Father, descended to our lowliness.

According to the common will of the Father and the Spirit, and according to his infinite nature and being, suffering no limits, no bound by our successive movements, acting by nature in an all-divine way, he entered the virginal womb of Mary, the holy and radiant Virgin, full of divine wisdom, and free from all defilement of body, soul and spirit; he became incarnate, he, the incorporeal; he took on our form, he who, according to the divine essence, was free of form, as to exterior and appearance; he took on a body like ours, he, the immaterial; he became truly man, without ceasing to be God.

Saint Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 639)