This past summer the marriage group my husband and I belong to read a play written by Pope John Paul II (before he was pope) titled “The Jeweler’s Shop.” It had been on my reading list for years, especially because one of my friends was proposed to in the same way Teresa was proposed to by Andrew on the first page of Act I.
Andrew asks not “Will you marry me?” but rather, “Do you want to be my life’s companion?”
This three-act play written in 1960 tells the story of three couples. The first act is about a couple’s engagement. The second, about a couple’s marriage unraveling. Then the third, with a twist, tells the story of an engagement between two children born from the relationships in the first two acts.
The experience of the engaged couple, Teresa and Andrew, resonated with me. Their love grew out of an already deeply fostered friendship. Andrew expresses how his love for Teresa is like “a collision in which two selves realize profoundly they ought to belong to each other.” He then describes the wedding rings in the window of the jeweler’s shop as “just artifacts of precious metal” – that is, “until that moment when I put one of them on Teresa’s finger and she puts the other on mine. From then on they will mark our fate.”
That fate is freely embarked upon, chosen upon, vowed upon. Neither Teresa nor Andrew knew what their future together would bring, yet they chose one another out of a love which sprung from freedom. Together they accepted their future without anxiety, because their love and unity had overcome their fears.
As they both express at the end of Act I, “the future depends on love.”
This choice for one another, brought about in freedom, is essential to theology of the body. This is the ideal disposition when entering into a lifetime commitment with another person. In the words of John Paul II, “Love causes man to find fulfillment through the sincere gift of self. To love means to give and to receive something which can be neither bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually.”
Just as Teresa and Andrew articulate, their future (and fulfillment) depends on their love. Thankfully, through the grace of the sacrament of Matrimony, we are given the strength to grow in loving and honoring all the days of our life. We just need to remember to ask for it and to look for it.
This is the first of a three-part series on “The Jeweler’s Shop.”