Chapter XIII. How God Is Jealous of Us.

HOW GOD IS JEALOUS OF US.

God speaks thus: I am the Lord thy God, a jealous God.[1] The Lord his name is jealous.[1] God is jealous then, Theotimus, but what is his jealousy? Truly it seems at first to be a jealousy of cupidity such as is that of husbands for their wives: for he will have us so to be his, that he will in no sort have us to be any other's but his. No man, saith he, can serve two masters.[1] He demands all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength; for this very reason he calls himself our spouse, and our souls his spouses; and names all sorts of separations from him, fornication, adultery. And high reason indeed has this great God, all singularly good, to exact most rigorously our whole heart: for ours is a little heart, which cannot supply love enough worthily to love the divine goodness. Is it not therefore meet, that since we cannot give him such measure of love as were requisite, that at least we should love him all we can? The good which is sovereignly lovable, ought it not to be sovereignly loved? Now to love sovereignly, is to love totally.

However, God's jealousy of us is not truly a jealousy of cupidity, but of sovereign friendship: for it is not his interest that we should love him, but ours. Our love is useless to him, but to us a great gain; and if it be agreeable to him, it is because it is profitable to us: for being the sovereign good, he takes 445pleasure in communicating himself by love, without any kind of profit that can return to him thereby; whence he cries out making his complaint of sinners by way of jealousy: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.[1] Consider a little, Theotimus, I pray you, how delicately this divine lover expresses the nobility and generosity of his jealousy: They have left me, says he, who am the fountain of living water. As if he said: I complain not that they have forsaken me because of any injury their forsaking can cause me, for what the worse is a living spring if men do not draw water at it? Will it therefore cease to run, or to flow out on the earth? But I grieve for their misfortune, that having left me, they have chosen for themselves wells that have no water. And if, by supposition of an impossible thing, they could have met with some other fountain of living water, I would lightly bear their departure from me, since I aim at nothing in their love, but their own good. But to forsake me to perish, to fly from me to fall headlong, is what astonishes and offends me in their folly. It is then for the love of us that he desires we should love him, because we cannot cease to love him without beginning to be lost, and whatever part of our affections we take from him we lose.

Put me, said the divine shepherd to the Sulamitess, as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm.[1] The Sulamitess had her heart quite full of the heavenly love of her dear lover, who, though he possess all, yet is not content with it, but by a holy distrust of jealousy will be set upon the heart which he possesses, and will seal it with himself, lest any of the love due to him escape, or anything get entry which might mingle with it. For he is not satisfied with the love with which the soul of his Sulamitess is filled, if it be not invariable, quite pure, quite solely his. And that he may not only enjoy the affections of our heart, but also the effects and operations of our hands, he will also be as a seal upon our right arm, that it may not be stretched out or employed save in the works of his service. 446And the reason of the divine lover's demand is, that as death is so strong that it separates the soul from all things, yea even from her own body, so sacred love which is come to the degree of zeal, divides and separates the soul from all other affections, and purifies her from all admixture; since it is not only strong as death, but it is withal bitter, inexorable, hard and pitiless in punishing the wrong done unto it, when rivals are entertained with it, as hell is hard in punishing the damned. And even as hell, full of horror, rage and cruelty, admits no mingling of love, so jealous love tolerates no mixture of another affection, willing that all be for the well-beloved. Nothing is so gentle as the dove, yet nothing so merciless as he towards his mate, when he has some feeling of jealousy. If ever you have taken notice, Theotimus, you will have seen that this mild bird, returning from his flight, and finding his mate amongst his companions, is not able to suppress in himself a certain sense of distrust, which makes him churlish and ill-humoured, so that at their first accosting he circles about her, murmuring, fretting, treading upon her, and beating her with his wings, although he knows well that she is faithful, and that he sees her in the pure white of innocence.

One day S. Catharine of Siena was in a rapture which did not deprive her of the use of her senses, and while God was showing her wondrous things, one of her brothers passed by, and with the noise he made disturbed her attention, so that she turned and looked at him for a single little moment. This little distraction, so unforeseen and sudden, was neither sin, nor disloyalty, but only a shadow of sin and resemblance of disloyalty: and yet the most holy Mother of the heavenly lover did so earnestly chide her and the glorious S. Paul so put her to confusion for it, that she thought she should have melted away in tears. And David, re-established in grace by a perfect love, how was he treated for the simply venial sin which he had committed in numbering his people?

But, Theotimus, he who desires to see this jealousy delicately and excellently described, must read the instructions which the seraphic S. Catharine of Genoa has made to declare the properties of pure love, amongst which she inculcates and 447strongly urges this;—that perfect love, namely, love which has gone as far as zeal, cannot suffer any mediation, interposition, or mingling of any other thing, not even of God's gifts, yea, up to this extreme, that it permits not even the love of heaven, except with intention to love more perfectly therein the goodness of him who gives it. So that the lamps of this pure love have neither oil, wick, nor smoke, but are all fire and flame, which nothing in the world can extinguish. And those who carry these burning lamps in their hands, possess the most holy fear of chaste spouses, not the fear which belongs to adulterous women. Those have fear, and these also, but differently, says S. Augustine; the chaste spouse fears the absence of her husband, the adulterous, the presence of hers. The former fears his departure, the latter his stay: the one is so deeply amorous that she is extremely jealous; the other is not jealous, because she is not amorous: the one fears to be punished, and the other fears that she may not be loved enough;—yet in sooth she does not precisely fear the not being loved enough, as other jealous persons do, who love themselves and want to be loved, but her fear is that she loves not him enough whom she sees so love-worthy that none can love him according to the greatness of the love which he deserves, as I have but just said. Wherefore she is not jealous with a jealousy of self-interest, but with a pure jealousy, which proceeds not from any cupidity, but from a noble and simple friendship; a jealousy which, with the love whence it proceeds, extends itself to our neighbour; for since we love our neighbour as ourselves for God's sake, we are also jealous of him, as of ourselves, for God's sake, so that we would even die that he may not perish.

Now as zeal is an inflamed ardour, or an ardent inflaming of love, it requires to be wisely and prudently practised; otherwise, under the cloak of it, one would transgress the limits of moderation or discretion, and it would be easy to pass from zeal into anger, and from a just affection to an unjust passion; wherefore, this not being the proper place to put down the conditions of zeal, my Theotimus, I tell you that for the practice of it you must always have recourse to him whom God has given you for your direction in the devout life.

Of the Zeal or Jealousy Which We Have for Our Lord. 448

OF THE ZEAL OR JEALOUSY WHICH WE HAVE FOR OUR LORD.

A Gentleman desired a famous painter to paint him a horse running, and the painter having presented the horse to him on its back, and as it were rolling in the mire, the gentleman began to storm; whereupon the painter turning the picture upside down: Be not angry, sir, said he; to change the position of a horse running into that of a horse rolling on its back, it is only necessary to reverse the picture. Theotimus, he who would clearly see what zeal or what jealousy we must have for God, has only to express properly the jealousy we have in human things, and then to turn it upside down, for such will that be which God requires from us for himself.

Imagine, Theotimus, what comparison there is between those who enjoy the brightness of the sun, and those who have only the paltry light of a lamp; the former are not jealous of one another, for they know well that that great light is abundantly sufficiently for all, that the one's enjoyment does not hinder the other's, and that, although all possess it in general, each one possesses it none the less than if he alone possessed it in particular. But as to the light of a lamp, since it is little, limited, and insufficient for many, each one desires to have it in his chamber, and he that has it is envied by the rest. The good of human things is so trifling and beggarly, that when one has it, another must be deprived of it; and human friendship is so limited and weak, that in proportion as it communicates itself to the one, it is weakened for the others: this is why we are jealous and angry when we have rivals and companions in it. The heart of God is so abounding in love, his good is so absolutely infinite, that all men may possess him without lessening each one's possession; this infinity of goodness can never be drained, though it fill all the hearts of the universe; for when everything has been filled with it to the brim, his infinity ever remains to him quite entire, without any diminution whatever. The sun shines no less upon a rose together with a thousand 449millions of other flowers, than though it shone but upon that alone. And God pours his love no less over one soul, though he loves with it an infinity of others, than if he loved that one only: the force of his love not decreasing by the multitude of rays which it spreads, but remaining ever quite full of his immensity.

But wherein consists the zeal or the jealousy which we ought to have for the divine goodness? Theotimus, its office is, first, to hate, fly, hinder, detest, reject, combat and overthrow, if one can, all that is opposed to God; that is, to his will, to his glory, and the sanctification of his name. I have hated and abhorred iniquity,[1] said David, and: Have I not hated them, O Lord, that hated thee: and pined away because of thy enemies.[1] My zeal hath made me pine away because my enemies forgot thy words.[1] In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land; that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord.[1] See, I pray you, Theotimus, with what zeal this great king is animated, and how he employs the passions of his soul in the service of holy jealousy! He does not simply hate iniquity but abhors it; upon the sight of it he pines away, he falls into a swoon and a failing of heart, he persecutes it, overthrows it, and exterminates it. So Phinees transported with a holy zeal ran his sword through that shameless Israelite and vile Madianite; so the zeal which consumed our Saviour's heart, made him cast out and instantly take vengeance on the irreverence and profanation which those buyers and sellers committed in the temple.

Secondly, zeal makes us ardently jealous of the purity of souls, which are the spouses of Jesus Christ, according to the word of the holy Apostle to the Corinthians: I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.[1] Eliezer would have been stung with jealousy, if he had perceived the chaste and fair Rebecca, whom he was conducting to be espoused to his master's son, in any danger of being dishonoured; and doubtless he might have said to this holy maiden: I am jealous of you with the jealousy I have for my master, for I have espoused 450you to one man, that I may present you a chaste virgin to the son of my lord Abraham. So would the great S. Paul say to his Corinthians: I was sent from God to your souls to arrange the marriage of an eternal union between his Son our Saviour, and you, and I have promised you to him to present you as a chaste virgin to this divine lover; behold why I am jealous, not with my own jealousy, but with the jealousy of God, in whose behalf I have treated with you. It was this jealousy, Theotimus, that caused this holy Apostle daily to die and swoon away; I die daily, said he, I protest by your glory.[1] Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is scandalized and I am not on fire?[1] Mark, say the ancients, mark what love, what care, and what jealousy a mother-hen has for her chickens (for our Saviour esteemed not this comparison unworthy of his Gospel). The hen is a very hen, that is, a creature without any courage or nobility, while she is not yet a mother, but with her mothership she puts on a lion's heart: ever the head up, the eyes on guard, and darting glances on every side, to espy the smallest appearance of danger to her little ones. There is no enemy at whose eyes she will not fly in defence of her dear brood, for which she has a continual solicitude, making her ever run about clucking and plaining. And if any of her chickens come to die,—what grief, what anger! This is the jealousy of parents for their children, of pastors for their flocks, of brothers for their brethren. What was the zeal of the children of Jacob when they knew that Dina had been insulted? What was the zeal of Job from the apprehension and fear he had that his children might have offended God? What was the zeal of a S. Paul for his brethren according to the flesh, and for his children according to God, for whose sake he desired to be cast out as worthy of anathema and excommunication? What the zeal of Moses for his people, for whom he is willing, in a certain manner to be struck out of the book of life?

Thirdly, in human jealousy we are afraid lest the thing beloved be possessed by some other, but our zeal for God makes us on the contrary fear lest we should not be entirely enough 451possessed by him. Human jealousy makes us fear not to be loved enough, Christian jealousy troubles us with the fear of not loving enough; whence the sacred Sulamitess cried out: Show me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions.[1] Her fear is that she is not her sacred shepherd's own entirely, or that she may be led away, be it never so little, by those who wished to make themselves his rivals. For she will by no means permit that worldly pleasures, honours, or exterior goods shall take up a single particle of her love, which she has wholly dedicated to her dear Saviour.