Your Lord is very jealous for your love, believer. Did he choose you? Then he cannot bear to watch you choose another. Did he buy you with his own blood? Then he cannot stand the thought that you would live as if you belong to yourself, or to this world. He loved you with such burning love that he would not stay in heaven without you. He would rather die than lose you. And he cannot endure anything that wedges itself between your heart and his.

He is very jealous of your trust. He will not let you lean on human strength. He cannot bear to watch you dig out broken cisterns when his overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean on him, his heart rejoices. But when we shift our weight to something else—when we trust our own wisdom, or a friend's advice, or worst of all, when we trust in our own good works—he is grieved. And he will discipline us until we come back to himself.

He is also very jealous of your company. There should be no one you talk with more than Jesus. To remain in him alone, that is true love. But to commune with the world? To find your comfort in earthly pleasures? To prefer even the fellowship of other Christians to secret time with him? This wounds your jealous Lord. He longs for you to remain in him. He wants constant fellowship with you. And many of the trials he sends are meant to wean your heart from created things and fix it more closely upon himself.

But let this divine jealousy comfort you! If he loves you enough to be jealous over you, then you can be certain he will let nothing harm you. He will shield you from every enemy.

Oh, for the grace today to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved! May we guard them with sacred jealousy, shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world.