God is a jealous lover, but in this divine jealousy He is not like the neurotic human being who makes his beloved unhappy by his unlimited demands of attention and service. Divine jealousy is a love that enriches man.

If we were to regard charity as if it were only a purely human love, we might be tempted to think that charity is a love that makes man poor instead of rich. Or we might think that God is a jealous lover who resents the thought or affection that his friends give to anyone or anything else. In one way God is a jealous lover. He wants men to love Him above everything else, even above themselves. But this divine jealousy is not at all like the painful jealousy of the neurotic human being who makes his beloved unhappy by his unlimited demands of attention and service. Human jealousy, when carried to extremes, is a force that impoverishes the object of its affections. The jealous man will rob his wife of her parents, relatives and friends, her children, her work and her hobbies. He wants her to love nothing but himself. But the divine jealousy is a love that enriches man. God asks for man's love through charity not in order to take any good thing away from man but in order to give all good things to man. For through charity man attains God, and in God he finds all good both in this life and in the next. Charity is a share in divine love. But it is the love of God which is the source of all good in this life and in the next. It is love, the divine love, which has created the world and all good things in it. It is God's love which has made man himself and the world in which man is to seek for and find happiness. When a man loves God more than everything else, he finds everything else in God, everything else that can really make him happy.

Picture is by Gustave Dore