Salesian Literature

Chapter 13  :  How God is jealous in his love of us

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God has this to say: I thy God, the Lord Almighty, am jealous in my love; the very name of the Lord bespeaks jealous love, he will endure no rival 9Ex. 20:5; 34:14).

 

God, therefore, is jealous; but in what way?  Most assuredly, it appears at first sight to be selfish, a begrudging jealousy such as husbands have for their wives.  God means us to be so completely his that no one else shall prove a hindrance to his exclusive right.  A man, he says, cannot be the slave of two masters at once (Mt. 6:24).  He asks our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, our whole strength (cf. Deut. 6:5; Mt. 22:37).  For this very reason he calls himself our bridegroom, refers to our souls as his brides; any estrangement from him he describes as fornication or adultery.

 

He has every reason too, this great God of ours, utterly and uniquely good, to seek entire possession of our whole hearts; they are so tiny, their capacity of loving falls far short of what his goodness deserves.  Surely, then, it is only right that, since we cannot give him all the love which is his due, we should at least give him what we can.  If goodness is supremely lovable, surely it should be supremely loved; and we are loving supremely, if we love utterly.

 

However, God’s jealousy of us does not spring from selfish love, but from the higher love of friendship.  It is not he who stands to gain from our love of him, but we.  Our love fills no need of his, but we derive great benefit from it; if he welcomes it, that is because it is to our advantage.  As the supreme good, he delights in imparting himself to us through love, though he can hope for nothing in return.  Thus, in jealous fashion, he complained of sinners: Me they forsook, the fountain of living water, and thereupon they dug cisterns of their own; leaking cisterns, that water had none to give them (Jer. 2:13).

 

Notice, if you will, how delicately the divine lover expresses the nobility and magnanimity of his jealousy: Me they forsook, he says, the fountain of living water.  In other words: “My complaint that they have forsaken me springs from no injury to me; after all, it is no detriment to a fountain, if men do not drink form it; that will not cause it to dry up or disappear.  No, I grieve for their misfortune in being saddled with cisterns that lack water, after leaving me.  Could they – to suppose the impossible – have hit upon some other fountain of living water, I should gladly endure their departure; their own happiness is my own motive in seeking their love.  What surprises and exasperates me about their folly is that they should leave me for their ruin, forsake me to rush headlong to destruction.”

 

It is for love of us, therefore, that he wishes us to love him, for we cannot cease to love him without taking our first steps towards damnation; and, by turning from him any of our emotion, we destroy them.

 

St. Catherine of Siena once experienced a rapture during which she retained the use of all her senses.  While God was showing her wondrous things, one of her brothers went by so noisily that he attracted her attention, and she turned to look at him for the fraction of a second.  This tiny distraction, so unforeseen so sudden, was neither a sin nor an infidelity, only a passing shadow.  Yet God’s blessed Mother so vigorously upbraided her, and the glorious St. Paul so put her to the blush for it, that she was on the point of dissolving into tears.  Then there was David restored to grace by perfect love – think of the punishment meted out to him for the single venial sin of registering his people! (cf. 2 Kgs. 24).

 

The chaste wife fears her husband’s absence, the adulteress fears his presence; “the former is afraid when he goes away, the latter when he stays at home.[1]”  The one is so deeply in love that she is supremely jealous of it; the other knows no jealousy, because she is not in love.  The evil wife is afraid of a beating; the good wife is afraid of love growing stale.

 

In point of fact, however, souls like the chaste bride are not actually afraid of being unloved – like jealous folk who love themselves and seek the love of others – but they are afraid of not loving sufficiently the God they see to be so lovable that no one can ever give him a love that even approaches the height of love which he deserves.

 

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[1]  St. Augustine, Commentary on the Psalms.

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