If the Redeemer had come to be feared and respected by men, He would have come as a full-grown man and with royal dignity: but because He came to gain our love, He chose to come and to show Himself as an infant and the poorest of infants, born in a cold stable between two animals, laid in a manger on straw, without clothing or fire to warm His shivering limbs; thus would He be born, who willed to be loved and not feared.
 
Leo