KAROL WOJTYLA THE JEWELER’S SHOP A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on Occasion into a Drama Translated from the Polish by Bole slaw Taborski ( SAN FRANCISCO IGNATIUS PRESS 7/6? .OH n i) i Originally published in English by Hutchinson Publishing Group. Ltd., England © 1980 Libreria Editricc Vaticana, Vatican City Translation © 1980 Boleslaw Taborski All rights reserved • lit / 7 1 •. Y'r.n M.J / *' i. Cover by Marcia Ryan Published 1992 Ignatius Press, San Francisco ISBN1 978-0-89870-426-6 Library of Congress catalogue number 92-73771 Printed in the United States of America Acknowledgments My humble gratitude is due to the author for having inspired me with the wish to translate his dramatic works from the Polish original. I am indebted to Sister Emilia Ehrlich for her com­ ments, to Mike Simpson for having looked over the text, and to Carol O’Brien of Hutchinson, the British pub­ lisher, for her efficient help in the preparation of the final version of this translation. B.T. ; I j CONTENTS Introduction 9 Act I. THE SIGNALS 21 Act II. THE liHIDEGROOM 45 Act III. THE CHILDREN 69 I l Nl H O a n OLL O N Speaking to the intellectuals and artists of his old metro­ politan Sec of Krakow during his historic journey to Poland in June 1979, Pope John Paul II recalled that one of the closest friends of his youth “considered the spoken word and the theater to be my calling, but Our Lord Jesus thought it was priesthood”. The future Pope’s con­ nections with the theater, in one w'ay or another, spanned well over three decades, and for some of that time it was an open question in which of the two directions young Karol Wojtyla would go. The theater had been his great passion since childhood in the town of Wado- wice, where he was the star actor in numerous school productions, some of which he also helped direct. And it remained a passion in his student days at Krakow, both before and during World War II, when he was a member of three theater groups in succession. It was in 1941 that Karol Wojtyla’s theatrical aspirations were realized most fully. In that year he co-founded, with Dr. Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk (the friend recalled four decades later in the Pope's speech), the Rhapsodic Theater, 11