I should like to know, O rich man, if you in your suffering excuse even your own self. You would not have come to these evils if on earth you had given a crumb from your huge barns and a drop from your great wine presses. What the flesh needs, and nature demands, and suffices for life, is little. Avarice is the reason why a man stores up many great possessions, not for himself but for others, and that clearly to his present or future suffering.
But, you object, O rich man: “Even if I did refuse to give wine, what I ask for is water, which the Creator himself of all beings and nature gave as something common to all human beings.” I think, O rich man, that you refused even water to the poor man. You exposed him to as many dogs as you could to keep him from entering your door and coming to your well.
“Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water.” What is the meaning of this which you say if he is not to bring the water? Evidently, that water is nearby to you. And if it is near, why do you not take it from nearby? Why? Because your hands are rightly bound, O rich man. Because you spurned to give help to Lazarus’ hands when they had lost their strength through weakness. Man should certainly share his members with the weak. When Job was not so much giving them as giving them back, he spoke as follows: “I was an eye of the blind, and a foot of the lame. I was the father of the weak.” O man, if you do not have a coin, give a poor man your hand, because he shows greater mercy who by his own hand leads a poor man who is weak to his table. He gives his very self to the poor man who devotes himself to his service, makes himself the poor man’s servant.
St. Peter Chrysologus