One thing that I have come to realize throughout my previous
studying of St. John Paul II is that he has an amazing connection with the
people of the church. He is well known for his connection with the youth, and
while yes, it is true that he does have this specific connection, his
observation of man as a whole, in each stage of life is rather mesmerizing.
After reading through the Homily that St. John Paul II delivered in Boston in
1979, I could not get out of my head just how connected he was to all people.
As many know the new saint lived in Poland during the Second
World War. He was a gifted student, studying Polish Philology, as well as a
gifted actor. Throughout the war the young saint participated in the rhapsodic
theater. It was a theater which focused very little on the movement, and
highlighted the word. Acting and theater was a career Karol Wojtyla thought
seriously about pursuing, until he heard God’s call to the priesthood.
He may not have pursued the theater and the arts as many of
his friends had expected him to, but he never quite gave up on them either. Around
1960 Karol Wojtyla wrote and published
The
Jeweler’s Shop – A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on
Occasion into Drama. It is a play that encompasses many ideas of the
Rhapsodic Theater including “respect for the concrete person, freedom, and the
search for community and solidarity.”
Many are able to identify that this little play also goes hand in hand with the
Holy Father’s later teachings on the Theology of the Body.
So what is the story of The
Jewler’s Shop? It is the story of three different couples, the first couple
and their engagement. The second couple’s struggles and how they are slowly falling
apart from the inside out. The third couple is each a child from one of the
previously mentioned relationships who are now moving toward matrimony
themselves despite their rather difficult roots. The thing about this play is
that it is written so eloquently. It seems as though St. John Paul II pulled
from places that he was familiar with, as in the settings, the town square, and
the hiking, as well as illustrating struggles and relationships that he would
have witnessed himself as a priest.
The First couple, Teresa and Andrew, who John Paul II writes
about, is the couple that everyone wishes to be. They’ve slowly fallen in love
over time, knowing one another for years. They had been friends for several
years, hiking together, and just spending time with their friends. They had
simply built a friendship and now they were beginning to work together to
create a new family. There is an
innocence and purity to their love, they found one another, despite the
distractions and they trusted that they could make it work. Teresa makes it a
point to say that she does not know what time Andrew asked her to marry her;
she was too caught up looking at him, and taking in the moment, that she didn’t
see the world around her, and didn’t look at the clock in the town square. She
explains that though she paused, there was no hesitation in her answer; she
knew it was yes immediately. The trip to the Jeweler’s shop, and the Jeweler
himself cemented her answer.
Look at this first example of love, what do we see? We see
purity, respect for one another, and a relationship based in God’s love
first. Despite the smaller hardships and
struggles that this couple would have gone through one can see just how
perfectly they are made for each other. The space that you visualize when
reading the story is, at least for me, a Polish town square, a bell tower, a
jeweler’s shop, and surrounding buildings. The Pope it appears pulled from
places which he was familiar with when writing this play. This couple continues
on to have a son, Christopher, but soon after his birth, Andrew is sent to war
where he dies. Teresa raises Christopher on her own, he is lacking the father
figure in his life and later on, he comes to wonder how things would have been
different and if he would have been more prepared for marriage. The loss of
Andrew made me see a parallel between the first couple’s family and the family
from which the Pope grew up in, in his case however having lost his mother; he
lacked the maternal figure in his life.
The second couple, Anna and Stefan, is a couple going
through a rather difficult time in their relationship. They appear to no longer
care for one another, and Anna feels as though Stefan has driven her away. She
decides that the best way to handle this is to continue to push him farther
away, making no attempt at resolving their issues, and causing their children
to suffer. Anna regrets her marriage and one night she tries to find a
distraction. After much struggle, she comes face to face with the “bridegroom,”
who to her chagrin has the face of the man whom she married. She tried to sell
her ring, assuming that she would make a small profit from the gold, only to
discover that it is not based on the value of the metal, but the weight, and
her ring weighs nothing without her husband’s ring. Adam, a friend she meets
outside of the shop is her voice of reason. He reminds her of the importance of
the vows she made when marrying Stefan, explaining that she cannot just walk away,
there needs to be effort in resolving what has become broken and she has to
find somewhere to begin.
This second example of love is the one which people fear
they will find themselves involved in. It was beautiful and passionate at the
beginning, and it has slowly diminished. Neither person has any idea where to
begin so that they can resolve their relationship, and so they choose to simply
ignore it, allowing much tension and distress to find its way into the
household. How many relationships can we imagine that the Holy Father had
witnessed slowly starting to fall apart. It’s the mundaneness of everyday life
that causes people to get comfortable and fail to make the other feel special
in any way. But these difficulties take time and discernment to be resolved;
divorce isn’t something that should occur at the whim of an unhappy couple.
Effort should be made to try and resolve the difficulty, and as the priest who
would be giving the advice, we can only imagine John Paul II as Adam, the voice
of reason, who helps Anna try to put her emotions in order and her marriage
into perspective.
Christopher and Monica make up the third couple. Christopher
comes from the marriage of Teresa and Andrew, cut short by Andrew’s death while
away at war. Monica’s family is made up of the broken home of Anna and Stefan’s
marriage. Both children have managed to find love in the other, and yet they
fear for themselves and their relationship, as well as any children whom they
may have. Monica is afraid that Christopher and she will fall out of love, and
fall away from one another, as she has seen her mother and father do.
Christopher fears that he will not be a proper husband to Monica as he has had
very little example of how a man should behave since the loss of his father at
such a young age. Still they let their shy love win over. Despite their
difficulties and fears, they still care deeply for one another. They visit the
Jeweler’s shop and unlike Teresa and Andrew who felt as though the Jeweler read
their entire future simply by looking at them, they could not see the greatness
of the Jeweler. They were happy, at peace in one another, and saw nothing more
in the rings than a visible sign of their commitment to one another.
These fears of Christopher and Monica’s which the Pope so
beautifully explains, causes one to yet again see his connection with the
youth. Yes, love and marriage, theology of the body, it is all connected, but
still this hesitation and struggle which they find themselves facing simply to
accept the love of another, who could quite possibly turn around and fail them,
is a beautiful meditation. I come from a broken home, for lack of a better
term. Yes, we’ve adapted, we aren’t seriously lacking in anyway, and we all
have good relationships, but I find it quite easy to place myself in the shoes
of Monica specifically. I fear all of the same things, finding someone whom I
can love now, and who will love me now, only to turn around years later and
fall out of love with me. It’s terrifying, but with God all things are
possible. That is where discernment comes in.
The reason I decided to talk about this play is because it
is the writings of John Paul II but in a completely different light. Sure there
is still theology throughout it, and his Theology of the Body is most
definitely present in the way he presents the relationships, reminding us that
we are called to mirror the most holy trinity, even throughout the difficult
times. But there is also the sheer humanity of the story, the love, the lust,
the struggles, the fears, and the hope, which are all present in the story. Yes, it is minimalistic and solely focused on
the words within the tale rather than the actions, that is why reading the
script of the play can be so fulfilling.
The story is not something that you need to see laid out
before you in order to understand it, rather it is beautifully presented in
such a way that simply reading the text allows you to grasp so much from it,
you can place yourself in the shoes of each character. The fact that the Holy Father chose to present
a meditation on the sacrament of marriage with a very realistic view of how
couples handle the obstacles presented to them is incredible. Sometimes I think
that people assume the Catholic church has all of these ideals, and that she
refuses to acknowledge the human struggles that actually come up. Saint John
Paul II was able to look at these ideals and acknowledge the difficulties that
man has in following through with them sometimes, but ultimately he reminds us
that if we have God we can get through anything.
If you haven’t read the play I recommend it or you could
watch it on YouTube – I will post a link under my resources. J
Resources –
John Paul. The Jeweler's Shop: A Meditation On
the Sacrament of Matrimony Passing On Occasion Into a Drama. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1992, 1980.
