“In accordance with the will of God and the union of nature, we ought to be of mutual help one to the others, and to vie with each other in doing duties, to lay all our advantages as it were before all, and (to use the words of Scripture) to bring help one to the other from a feeling of devotion or of duty, by giving money, or by doing something, at any rate in some way or other; so that the charm of human fellowship may ever grow sweeter among us…”
St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (338-397), from On the Duties of the Clergy, Book One, Chapter XXVIII.