Memorial of St. Vincent de Paul, priest

Today's Mass Readings

Jealousy gets a bad rap. Seriously! I know, I know, every wedding you have ever been to has droned on with 1 Corinthians instructing you that “love is not jealous” (13:4). Yet, our word jealous and another word zealous have a single word origin. And I think that you could describe the love and duty that spouses have for one another as a kind of zealous exclusivity. Husbands and wives should not be suspicious, but they have a right to each other’s time and affections upon which others cannot trespass.

Thus God can describe Himself as jealous for the people of Judah, His Bride. We know that a husband is called to lay down his life for his bride, and how much more so should the Lord. If marriage is a mutual gift of self, then we in the Church must attempt equal and opposite jealousy to God. We cannot set other activities before Sunday, our monetary success before morals, and our entertainment ahead of prayer.

There are further ideas to glean from this kind of jealousy. It actually can pull us out of ourselves and care about what really matters. We can be jealous for our country, appropriately, for example. As Archbishop Charles Chaput recently wrote:

We’re encouraged to believe that real happiness comes from satisfying our personal desires. And the rapacious individualism this nurtures is what will dominate the world if we one day live as postnational ‘global citizens.’ That destiny would not be the unity of a universal brotherhood. It would be a life in a managed, technocratic cocoon organized to promote consumption and self-invention. In the place of solidarity, we’ll have the consolations of shopping and travel. (Things Worth Dying For 112)

Proper understanding of zeal of our affections and duties will order us into a set of right relationships, first and foremost, with our God.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB