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Veronica's Veil Players |
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A Nonprofit Organization |
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The History of Veronica’s Veil: |
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History's pages have recorded many outstanding events which have deeply affected human hearts and minds. However, none created such an impact as did the passion and death of Jesus Christ. The story of His sacrifice which occurred almost two thousand years ago, is the most gripping, moving, poignant drama ever enacted on the stage of history. His teachings, which seemed to culminate in dismal defeat on Golgotha's heights, were revitalized and reborn in His resurrection. In building the Church which He founded, His Apostles and their disciples related the sacred story over and over, touching the hearts of many. The evangelists, in their gospels and epistles, set forth in expansive detail Calvary's lesson of Divine love.
Recognizing the significance of those tragic hours, the early storytellers dramatized the sacred narrative in crude forms so as to reach even the most unimaginative of people. They acted out the story so that it could be perceived and understood by all. Then came the medieval period when dramatic presentations flourished in the form of miracle or mystery plays espoused by religious and secular sponsors. Some emulated the great Greek tragedies while others made Christian dogma their central theme.
This dramatic trend continued for centuries in various countries but the first religious presentation which created international interest was the Passion Play of Oberammergau, a small village in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. It was in the year 1633 when the villagers made a solemn vow that, if their village were spared from the Black Death, then ravaging Europe, they would depict the sufferings and death of the Saviour every ten years, on stage. Their prayers were answered and, except in times of war, the pledge has been kept faithfully for more than 300 years.
In the New World, here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the year 1910 two Priests of the Passionist Congregation worked side by side at St. Michael's Rectory on Pius Street, South Side, to write an American counterpart to the Oberammergau drama. Father Bernardine Dusch, C.P. and Father Conrad Eiben, C.P. (at that time parish priests at St. Michael's) were in reality putting into effect a vow every Passionist takes, namely, to promote devotion and love for the sufferings of Jesus during His Sacred Passion. Usually this vow is carried out in the preaching apostolate of these men of the Cross, whose first American home was at St. Paul's Monastery and Retreat House here on the South Side of Pittsburgh. So Father Bernardine and Father Conrad worked on the idea of preaching this holy message of their vocation through the medium of the stage. One wonders if they foresaw that their writings and their plans would find expression all these years in the play they wrote and produced. For when the curtain goes up at the beginning of this lenten season, it will mark the 90th year of the Passion Play - "Veronica's Veil".
The Passion Play had its birth in Pittsburgh, then moved on to Union City New Jersey, Baltimore Maryland, and Dunkirk New York, cities where the Passionist Fathers have Monasteries and Parishes. So successful was the production here in Pittsburgh that in 1925 the stage and auditorium had to be enlarged. The newspaper accounts of 1925 proudly hailed the new auditorium as the finest one in the City of Pittsburgh and could say "the Nixon Theater stage is not as deep as Saint Michael's." |
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Veronica's Veil Players |