Do the monks/nuns eat the same food as guests?
St Benedict’s Rule puts a lot of emphasis on hospitality. The monks were supposed to maintain a separate kitchen (where meat could be served, in contrast to the diet specified for the monastery itself), and the abbot or a senior monk was to dine with the guests. Even the internal fasts of the monastery were to take second place to the duty of hospitality, with an instruction to break the fast in order to dine with a new arrival. It’s an approach that has firm roots in the desert monk tradition, where two visiting monks were scandalized by the rich meal offered to them by a famous monk – they didn’t realize that what he offered them was very far from his normal fare. Within the monastery proper, the Rule specifies a regime of either one or two meals a day depending on the season (but able to be modified by the abbot if the needs of the time and place demand it), with no meat of four-hoofed animals (so birds and fish are ok). The monastic fasts specified by the Rule are generally about h
