  We consider an extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model for the light meson
sector of QCD where unphysical quark production thresholds are excluded by an
infrared cut-off on the momentum integration within quark loop diagrams. This
chiral quark model conserves the low energy theorems. The infrared cut-off is
fixed selfconsistently by the dynamically generated quark mass (quark
condensate). The masses and decay widths of the \sigma- and \rho-mesons are
described in the model.
