Overheard in the Sacristy

7-minute video part 14 of the film Chocolat

Chocolat is a 2000 film based on the novel Chocolat by Joanne Harris. It tells the story of a young mother who, in 1959, arrives at the fictional, repressed French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes with her six-year-old daughter and opens La Chocolaterie Maya, a small chocolaterie. Her chocolate quickly begins to change the lives of the townspeople.

Chocolat is a Lenten/Easter story of the sin of pride and the virtue of humility.

The crux of the movie can be found in Pere Henri’s sermon on Easter. Even though he is vested incorrectly, he says,

“We can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, by what we resist and who we exclude; I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, by what we create, and who we include.”