Chocolate for Lent
Week Three -- Group Encounter
View Movie Clip
Scenes: Beginning of film, under opening credits: in church, wind blows door; Vianne’s arrival.
Discuss
1. The
2. Tranquilité doesn’t seem such a bad thing—after all, who doesn’t want life to be safe, secure and calm? But what damage is done by this sort of tranquility, this need to maintain an ordered, uncontroversial life at all costs? What unhealthy situations did it lead to in the film?
3. How would you evaluate your church and/or local community on a “tranquilité scale”: too much, not enough, just right?
4. Chocolat gives voice to a common view in our society: religion is to be mistrusted because it so often leads to oppression. Clearly this is not what Christ had in mind. Equally clearly, there is ample evidence for this view. So what is it about communities of faith and their leaders that might make them susceptible to misuse of authority?
5. What might need to change if Christ turned up at your home or your parish or in your community?
View Movie Clip
Scene: Outside shop, Guillaume with dog meets widow Audel; Comte visits hairdressers; Comte and priest in graveyard.
Brainstorm
6. “If you lived in this village, you understood what was expected of you, you knew your place in the scheme of things.” In the film, who controls and who allows themselves to be controlled?
7. What do we learn from the film about these characters’ backgrounds that might explain why they behave the way they do?
8. In the movie, what techniques and tools do the “controllers” use to intimidate? In what other ways have you experienced intimidation or seen others intimidated?
9. In the movie, how do those who refuse to be intimidated demonstrate their defiance? Are there any other useful ways you have learned to stand up to those who intimidate?
Meditation
In the reflections that follow, ask God to show you any issues of inappropriate control in your life.
READER 1: Matthew 23:1-12, 23-28.
Brief pause for reflection
READER 2: When the north wind blows the church door open, the Comte de Reynaud is quick to shut it. Does he even notice the searing light outside? Does he think of anything other than keeping his world safe and contained, keeping things the way he feels they should be?
Brief pause for reflection
When Vianne, the mysterious stranger, comes to the village, she knocks on a door (how does she already know which door to knock on?!). If she is welcomed, it may change everything.
Brief pause for reflection
When Christ, in John’s vision in Revelation, spoke to a church that was comfortable and safe, he said this: “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door; I will come in and eat with him and he with me” (
Brief pause for reflection
Christ also said: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John
Brief pause for reflection
Prayer
Lord, help us to open the door—to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow through our stuffy lives.
Help us to open the door—to welcome strangers and intruders who may just be Christ in disguise.
Help us to open the door—to changes and disturbances that may just have something to teach us.
Help us, Lord, to open the door to YOU. Amen.
To Continue Your Reflection
During the writing of this book, my eye fell on an old newspaper put on the bathroom floor as protection while the room was being decorated. Since our family lives in the real world rather than that of TV’s Trading Spaces, it had been there for some time. The paper was dated a few days after the dramatic events of
Whether or not subsequent events have born that out, I shall leave you to decide. The point is that under the circumstances, it was an understandable knee-jerk reaction.
When our tranquility is threatened, our first thought is usually to try to regain control. And in order to do that we feel we need an enemy. We feel we need something or someone to fight, and the temptation is not to look too closely at whether or not the blame really lies there or whether or not fighting will solve the problem. The point is that we want to find an enemy that is external. The last thing we want to do if we are feeling insecure is to admit that some of the problem might possibly lie within.
The Comte de Reynaud knew this. He was no fool, says the film’s narrator, and he knew that even if he achieved the drunken Serge’s rehabilitation, that alone would not be enough for him to regain control of the town. “Some greater problem needed to be identified and solved.” And of course, conveniently, the river rats came sailing up the river and gave him the enemy without.
Read Matthew 23:1-12, 23-28.
Since he was a twelve-year-old visiting the
And Jesus had something even more radical to say. If you really wanted to change things, then the solution lay not in trying to hold on to control, but in voluntarily giving it away. It lay in being a servant. Dangerous ideas! And ones that made Jesus Himself immediately become the “enemy without.”
Pause for Thought
Who or what do you see as “the enemy without” in your life?
Is it possible that this outer enemy, this problem, may really lie within yourself? Can you name it?
Is it even a problem to which it is possible to attach blame?