“The Jeweler’s Shop” - St. John Paul II

Justin M. Vera

John Paul II Junior College

Man: The Image of God

November 18, 2018

Ms. Angela

“The Jeweler’s Shop”-St. John Paul II 

The Jeweler’s Shop is a meditation on marriage by the future pontiff, told with warmth and wit through the stories of three couples: a young couple torn by war, an older couple tempted by infidelity, and lastly the children of these two marriages who themselves are called to love. These acts focusing on each couple are tied together by encounters with the “Jeweler”, whose store seems oddly supernaturally attuned to the truth of marriage. (Coincidence??? I think not!)Near the beginning of The Jeweler's Shop, one of the characters, a young woman, recalls a hiking trip she took with friends. At night, in the mountains, a mysterious cry sounded, and everyone became quiet to listen for the call to sound again. The hikers call back, and there is no response. And the young woman, Teresa, begins wondering about signals sent and missed:

“Then I was thinking about signals that could not connect. It was a thought about Andrew and myself. And I felt how difficult it is to live. That night was truly terrible for me, though it was a truly glorious mountain night, and full of nature's secrets. Everything around seemed so very necessary and so in harmony with the world's totality, only man was off-balance and lost. Perhaps not every human being, but I knew for certain that I was. So today, when Andrew asked, “Would you like to become forever my life's companion?” after ten minutes I answered “Yes”, and after a while I asked him if he believed in signals.

These questions of harmony, signals, and man's place in the universe will be woven throughout the play. But I was struck today by the image the future pontiff chose, of the hiking group awed, disturbed, and mystified by the natural world. This passage doesn't come wholly from the playwright's imagination—JPII was well-known for his outdoorsman ship. As a young churchman, he often brought whole groups of his flock on mountain trips. Another thing that was likeable and was definitely at the back of his mind was joy, of course, this is part of his answer to Teresa's questions. Man can hear and respond to the signals by coming to see the world as a gift, and God as its loving Giver.

The Jeweler s Shop is essentially a static play. Yet it is dramatically effective and astonishingly modern in its technique. Composed of loose scenes and monologues that only tangentially converge to create the impression of a dialogue, the play is unified in a twofold way: thematically, in that all three acts deal with various phases of marital love; and on a more superficial level, in terms of the locale through repeated reminiscences of or references to the jeweler’s shop. 

Overall, I enjoyed the play, I hope that it can move on to become more than that. A cinematic adaptation would really be beautiful. I end this paper by saying that I hold JPII in even higher regards now that I have read some of his work.