In Act 2 of St. John Paul II’s play The Jeweler’s Shop, we meet Anna and Stefan. Unlike Teresa and Andrew, this couple does not share the kind of love and unity that dissolves one’s fears. They have grown apart from one another.
Anna describes her struggle to forgive her husband for letting their love fall away. Yet it doesn’t appear that he is the only one to blame. Anna perceives herself as completely without guilt and she herself takes no interest in her husbands’ life. In her words, “Life changed into a more and more strenuous existence of two people who occupied less and less room in each other.” There is no longer any joy or enthusiasm in their marriage.
When Anna brings her ring back to the jeweler’s shop in an attempt to sell it back, the jeweler finds that her wedding ring, weighed separately from her husband’s, does not register any weight on the scale. They can only be weighed together.
Facing her shame, she walks out of the shop where she meets a man named Adam. Before long, Anna starts telling him all about her marriage. Adam, a voice of reason in this story, explains to her how too often couples get carried away with the “surface of love…They get carried away by the thought that they have absorbed the whole secret of love, but in fact they have not yet even touched it.”
The secret of love
The love of the Bridegroom, however, is the kind of love that gives life through death. “In the Bridegroom’s face each of us finds a similarity to the faces of those with whom love has entangled us on this side of life, of existence,” Adam tells Anna.
What Adam is trying to help Anna understand is that she should not be trying to walk away from her husband. Somewhere along the way, their relationship started cracking, and each spouse contributed to the widening divide. But she must make an effort to repair what has been broken.
In our wedding vows we promise to honor our commitment to our spouse “for better, for worse.” In Anna’s case, she’s being asked to work through the “for worse” season of her marriage. She is called to be faithful, just as God is faithful to us.
God’s desire for marriage is that the sacrament would mirror his own life: a love that is free, total, faithful and fruitful.
Anna is called to be faithful to Stefan through her words and actions. This means that, just as Adam says, she must strive to bring life to her marriage through dying to self. She must offer the love of the Bridegroom – for this is “the whole secret of love.”