“Why, the author asked the patriarch, did God become a human being? Cyril’s answer was unambiguous. The Incarnation was necessary for the fair conduct of the Last Judgment. For if God had not identified himself with human flesh, the Devil would be able, at the Last Judgment, to challenge God’s right to condemn the heartless who had failed to show pity on the poor. For as God had never been incarnated, so the Devil would claim, he had never himself felt the hunger and thirst of human beings. Why should human beings be condemned by him for having failed to understand the misery of their fellows, if he had not done so? The rich and powerful were entitled to have lived the way they did, as serenely unruffled by human misery as was God himself. Only a God who, in becoming Christ, had taken into his very being the thirst and hunger of humankind, could with perfect sincerity condemn the rich for lack of fellow feeling for the poor.” (Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, pg. 111)
Fraternized 