Alasdair MacIntyre:
Consider a situation in which someone who comes across a seriously injured or ill or starving stranger, has the resources to provide needed help, and no one else both willing and able to do so is at hand. The stranger’s urgent need provides a sufficient reason for going to her or his aid. Suppose now that a bystander, unwilling her- or himself to give help, asks for a justification of the judgment that the stranger’s need provides a sufficient reason for going to her or his aid. It is one of the marks of the virtues of just generosity that those who possess it are not only disposed to find in someone’s need in such circumstances a sufficient reason for going to her or his aid, but will also be unable to conceive of such a reason as requiring or being open to further justification. To offer or even to request such a justification is itself a sign of defective virtue.
Simone Weil:
Those whom Christ recognized as his benefactors are those whose compassion rested upon the knowledge of affliction. … Those who have not seen the face of affliction, or are not prepared to, can only approach the afflicted behind a veil of illusion or falsehood. …
The benefactor of Christ, when he meets an afflicted man, does not feel any distance between himself and the other. He projects all his own being into him. It follows that the impulse to give him food is as instinctive and immediate as it is for oneself to eat when one is hungry. And it is forgotten almost at once, just as one forgets yesterday’s meals. Such a man would not think of saying that he takes care of the afflicted for the Lord’s sake; it would seem as absurd to him as it would be to say that he eats for the Lord’s sake. One eats because one can’t help it. Christ will thank the people who give in the way they eat.
These stand alone, but I’m hopefully teeing these up for more on Havel’s letters.