"Nothing takes up more space on the surface of human life than love, and nothing is more unknown and mysterious than love. The gap between what lies on the surface and what is the mystery of love - that is the source of drama. "

Karol Wojtyła, as auxiliary bishop of Kraków,  writing under the pen name Andrzej  Jawień, wrote a drama in three acts, The Jeweller's Shop (Przed sklepem jubilera), about the lives of three couples. In fact, it is "about love as an enduring challenge", for "love determines the future", of each of the three couples, and of each of us. It is full of symbolism and can speak powerfully to each of us, regardless of age or sex.

Besides the main characters, other figures appear in the play, among whom the most important are the Bridegroom, the Jeweller and Adam who declares: "Nothing takes up more space on the surface of human life than love, and nothing is more unknown and mysterious than love. The gap between what lies on the surface and what is the mystery of love - that is the source of drama. "

In the first act Teresa and Andrew speak of their engagement and marriage through the symbolism of the rings, and the act bears the title "Signals". The signals remind them of the urgency of turning towards one another, an inspiration heard only by those who truly listen to the promptings within.  "I thought of signals that somehow would not come together. I thought of Andrew and myself. And I felt the weight of life".

It is difficult to fully explain why "signals" direct someone towards a particular person or situation, just as it is difficult to explain that voice which Andrew hears in his conscience, which directs him towards Teresa almost like a command. Andrew utters telling words that describe the beginning of love: "I was almost compelled to take an interest in her. Teresa evidently had something that  matched my own personality."

Andrew  admits that there was a time when his senses fed on the charm of many different women, but every time he tried to follow one of them, he would find that she was a "desert island", and the beauty, which only his senses perceived, turned out to be a dangerous gift, "which many have paid for through the harm they inflicted on others".

If either of them should forget or doubt, the rings are there to remind them. A wedding ring, however, cannot be returned to the jeweller's shop for a refund, because it has value only together with that other ring. The Jeweller is willing to take the rings back only at the moment of the death of one of the spouses.

In this jeweller is an image of the eternal Jeweller. The Jeweller sees our thoughts and actions through his shop window, which is also a window onto our conscience. He cuts and prepares spiritual rings for the couples intending to enter into marriage. The Jeweller's scales also recall the words of St Augustine, who on one occasion described God as the one who weighs within man's inmost being, without man even noticing it. The image of the scales thus depicts the working of God, who alone knows how to weigh a person and his "weight". The ordinary jeweller's scales come to signify the instrument by which the Jeweller manages to test marriages spiritually.

"In verse addressed to the rings in the shop window, Andrew reflects on the strange art of an object able to provoke thoughts about human destiny: for now they are simply pieces of precious metal, but that will change the moment he places one ring on Teresa's finger and she places the other on his. From then on, he reflects, it will be the rings that mark their destiny - reminding them of the past as a lesson to be remembered, and opening the future to them each day by binding it to what has gone before.

Wojtyła does not hesitate, at the fitting moment, to call his jeweller the Jeweller. This happens when the eyes of the jeweller and the bridegroom met, and the Bridegroom then paused thoughtfully on the calm gaze of "the Jeweller", noticing only how piercing it is.  His gaze penetrates people right to the depths of their being, so that their past re-emerges and the future appears.

The Jeweller reflects that the weight of these gold rings [...] is not the weight of the metal. It is the specific weight of a human being - of each of you individually, and of you together. From now on, he says, the rings will have no separate value of their own, only a shared weight. This is the moment when the two become one, when two persons become one flesh.

There are two wedding rings because, as the couple say, together, at every moment, they will serve invisibly to unite them, like the outermost links of a chain.

In the second act the Bridegroom speaks of a wounded marriage between Anna and Stefan, first in the tedium of everyday life and then in quarrels and conflict. Stefan is superficial while Anna constantly strives after an unattainable love. "Love is not an adventure" - says Adam, as if reproaching  Anna – "it takes on the flavour of the whole person. It has its own specific weight."

The absence of Stefan within her, and of herself within Stefan, makes her feel estranged from herself. The dread of doubting love affects the whole of Anna's existence, threatening to destroy it at the root, to erase in her every hope of meaning. Life collapses under the "weight of the moment" and "love remains merely a set of duties, out of reach ...".

 "It cannot all end like this! Listen, it cannot! Man is continuity, wholeness and continuity - and so nothing can be left of it all but a single 'Nothing'! "

No, a moment of grace appears in the crisis, resembling a wandering along many paths and encountering many people without a real encounter. Adam appears. Anna asks him: "Why did you wake me?" Adam answers: "Because the Bridegroom will pass this way." As he passes - "he touches the love that is within them."

He helps them see how "love is the synthesis of two beings". From this arises the wonderful experience of finding themselves "within reach of His gaze, on the path of their own life." Our whole life lay before Him. His gaze gave us signals, but at the time we could not "grasp" them in their full fullness.

In Anna there awakens a longing for the perfect love she had been seeking, and had found neither in herself nor in any other man. Adam leads her to that love. Stefan concludes: "what a pity, what a pity, for so many years we haven't felt like two young people! Anna, Anna, how many things we have missed because of that!"

The third act "Children" brings the love story between Christopher and Monica, daughter of Anna from the previous story. They are burdened too by their parents' failures. However, hope appears that it is possible to rise above material and moral falls. Christopher concludes: "Perhaps God himself is testing us".

The lack of love is described as the absence/non-presence of her parents within Monica herself. This produces in her an emotional fragility,  she keeps circling endlessly around herself in a vicious circle. Christopher draws her out of her parents' embrace, telling her that when the moment comes he will take her from them, she will be ready then for suffering - the suffering of a new love, the suffering of a new birth.

" And, the play suggests, all will be filled with joy, tasting the very limits of what is humanly called happiness."