If the social and cultural implications of gift offering remained implicit and only tacitly and inconsistently acknowledged, informal support and gift exchange were still induced by beliefs and doctrines that lent them greater and more explicit normative force. The Christian tradition had long articulated a conceptual frame of reciprocity with God and the afterlife that offered powerful spiritual incentive for engaging in donations to monastic institutions and the church, as well as to hospitals, almshouses or the impotent poor. At the heart of this conception was the belief that charitable giving was an expression of faith and piety in which the poor were identified with Christ. Charitable offering was a gift to God, and it could earn the giver spiritual rewards by drawing God's attention and play a part in the believer's salvation. The seven works of mercy – feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the poor, welcoming the stranger, caring for the sick, helping prisoners and burying the dead – were considered an expression of the giver's love and purity of faith, thus providing a link with the afterlife where the deceased continually interceded in favour of the souls of the departed. A strong sacrificial dimension was built into these traditional beliefs in the reciprocity between man and God. The body of Christ in its suffering not only affected worship and liturgy, but also projected on acts of human charity, imbuing them with spiritual connotations of penitence, self-denial, asceticism and humility.