Back in November 1964, midway through my first semester of Ph.D. studies in English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City of New York, with classes two blocks west of Hunter College on 68th Street, I was part of my beloved teacher and mentor, Allen Mandelbaum’s, seminar in Dante. There were about a dozen of us, men and women, and we had just finished another two-hour class on the Inferno. It was dark outside, and windy, and you could hear the sirens and honking horns going by on the streets six stories down. We had gathered around Allen’s desk as he packed up his books to discuss the nature of hell and the sense of God’s justice as the Inferno got darker by the week.

Suddenly, one of the students, a young Jewish woman in her mid-20s, mentioned that, yes, after all, God was indeed a jealous God, which helped one understand the nature of love and self-abandonment. A jealous God? I blurted out, caught completely by surprise. How could such a thing be? How could anyone talk about God like that?! Wasn’t that blasphemy of a sort? Which was when the woman turned around, smiling, and said, yes, God was a jealous God. “El Qanna. Look it up in the Bible when you get a chance.”

To tell you the truth, I felt stymied, a bit shocked, really, so I muttered my thank you, then turned and left the classroom, pondering what she’d said as I descended onto the street and then into the subterranean world of the subway to begin my journey out to Queens and our second-story apartment in Flushing, where my dear wife, Eileen, pregnant with our first, would be waiting.

Still, on the way home, I kept turning what I’d heard over and over. A jealous God? Had I heard the words right? But how could such a thing be? Wasn’t the good Lord above all such petty things as jealousy, this sublime Creator who had made the earth and—as Genesis and Dante both remind us—the very stars?

But then, there were other things to think about for now. Like getting up the steps and out of the subway, leaving the sleeping homeless behind, then heading home, then scribbling down notes for my lecture on Socrates for the cops in the morning at my classroom next to the firing range at John Jay College down on Manhattan’s 28th. And so, I shelved the thought of a jealous God aside for some other day, when I might find myself less distracted. That is, if I ever really found myself.

All this was 60 years ago, you have to understand. And a thousand thousand other thoughts and distractions did of course keep clamoring for my attention, as is still the case I think for all of us. And the fact is that with time, most of our thoughts curl up, wither, turn to ashes and drift away.

But here’s the thing. Having published more than 20 books since then—critical studies, biographies, poetry, spiritual memoirs—that question of a jealous God keeps coming back to be pondered and, yes, resolved. Fortunately, one of the gifts of growing older (and one hopes, a bit wiser) is that you come to see some things more clearly. And one of those is what the prophets and the saints meant by this jealous God.

Think of it this way, for a moment. There’s the good Lord, who, it turns out, gave and gives himself to us with no holding back. It’s the image I think of whenever I pray the rosary, especially the sorrowful mysteries. The image of Jesus in the Garden of Olives outside the walls of Jerusalem, as his disciples nodded and slept nearby, and he prayed to his Father—to his Abba—that this turning himself completely over to the dark fate that awaited him might somehow be averted, though it could not. And why? Because of the Father’s love for us. Of you and me and a billion others, that we might finally understand what we had broken and smashed by turning away from Love.

This is the face you see: beaten, mocked, spat upon, a crown of thorns pushed down onto his head as he bled, all to mock him for saying who he was: the Messiah, the Christ, the promised one. Accepting it all, when he could have destroyed his accusers and tormentors.

And why? Because he is a jealous God, jealous for us all, our Good Shepherd in search of that one sheep who has stupidly wandered off, the father rushing toward his prodigal son, finally returned, to keep and protect his son or daughter.

It’s like the love you feel for your wife and children and grandchildren and family and friends, the ones you come in time to cherish even more than yourself. And that is what he asks of us: to be swept up in that torrent of love rushing back to the One who loves us.

Ah, Love! Giving yourself more and more each passing day to the One who loves and watches over you each passing day and night, day by day, month by month, year by year, there in fact when we were still in the womb—and before that. And, yes, who will be with us forever. Yes, this jealous God, who made you and countless others for himself, who nurtures and sustains us every day, a truth you come to understand more and more as you give yourself to him.

Paul Mariani, poet and biographer, is a former poetry editor at America and University Professor of English Emeritus at Boston College.