Benedict's chapter on kitchen service (RB 35, begun today) is often overlooked, especially by those who rarely, if ever, have to do any serious cooking, but it is effectively a treatise on the nature of community. Everyone is involved, unless there is some matter so important that an individual needs to be excused for a time. Those who are less strong are to be given help so that they too may serve. The flip side of this is that those who serve are in turn served; and one of the most beautiful aspects of monastic meals is the way in which all, from the youngest to the oldest, receive as well as give. As St Benedict remarks, such service "secures a richer reward and greater love".

The ritualisation of meals in a monastery is not stiff and formal. At its best it provides a domestic liturgy in which we thank God for the gifts given us and use eating and drinking to prepare for and recall the celebration of the Eucharist. The detail matters. We do not usually nowadays wash one another's feet, but the threefold blessings, the care taken to ensure that everything used at table is spotless, the silence, the reading, above all the fact that the meal is shared are a sign that what we are and do as a community is reinforced by our companionship, our breaking bread together.

It is just as well that Benedict had such a high ideal of kitchen service. Many a youthful monastic vocation has ended in the scullery where the "life of prayer" takes on a very muscular dimension. As a reality check, it is second to none. If we would see Christ in the liturgy, in the swirls of incense and the beauty of the chant, we must also see him in the kitchen amidst the baking trays and the brillo pads. Now, just remind me of that when I come to cook dinner today, please.