We need to protect and, in fact, enhance our need for intimacy. Especially in our times now of frenzied activities and tormenting concerns, we need to see to it that our fundamental requirement for intimacy is not unduly sacrificed.
Intimacy means we know who we are and not just what we can do. It means we know how to be at home even while we unavoidably get into some journey and feel like an exile which characterize our earthly life.
It means we continue to be persons and not converted into automatons because of our work. It means we are still connected to the very foundation of our being, the origin of our life that gives the blueprint for our whole life.
Yes, it’s true we have to be tough and strong, iron-clad and with some immunity to our increasingly polluted environment, not only in the physical sense but also in the moral sense. But we have to keep our intimacy intact, seeing to it that our heart continues to be of flesh and not turned into stone.
Yes, it’s true that we have to be efficient and flexible, knowing how to cope with the speeding pace of developments, but we should not allow ourselves to become robots, governed only by the standards of practicality, convenience and efficiency.
When we live intimacy, we always treat others as persons, eager to know them more and more to the point of not only remembering their names, but also other personal data and peculiarities, like their birthdays, their likes and dislikes, etc. We will treat them always as friends, even if they are subordinates at work.
We should be wary of being swept away by the torrent of our trials and challenges, and carried away by the flood of emotions and passions. These have the nasty habit of sapping our intimacy away and of leading us to behave less as a person, not to mention, as a child of God.
We should protect, fiercely if necessary, the intimacy of our personhood, which means we should not allow our mind and heart to be overtaken by external factors and mere emotions. We have to uphold the primacy of our reason that obviously has to be infused with faith, since it has to be properly engaged with God.
We have to see to it that our mind and heart are functioning properly, engaged first with God and then with others, keeping these relationships always personal and never just professional, social or formalistic, much less, merely material and mechanical.
We have to understand that our capacity for intimacy starts and is kept alive only when we have intimacy with God first. God is our foundation from whom we should never dare to be detached. Thomas a Kempis, in his Imitation of Christ, said something appropriate:
“Wherever you may find yourself, you will be a foreigner and a pilgrim. You will never find rest unless you unite yourself intimately to Christ.”
To nourish this need for intimacy, we need to nourish our intimacy with Christ, with God. We have to learn how to do that, because while we have a natural tendency for God, that tendency can easily be, and in fact is often, perverted by a number of factors and reasons.
As in, we convert our sense of intimacy only in the physical, if not, sexual sense. Or we mistake it for what is known as individualism or isolationism. True intimacy does not cut us off from God and from others. Quite the contrary happens.
In short, we can say we are truly nourishing our need for intimacy when we feel God is the primary and immediate driving force of our thoughts, desires, intentions, words and deeds. Short of that, we are not actually living intimacy, even if for some reason we may feel as if we are.
So that we can be intimate with God and with others, we need to spend time with him, and really train our mind and heart to develop and strengthen a sense of attraction and attachment to him.
Otherwise, we will easily be overtaken by the concerns of this world that can easily hold us captive in the realm of senses alone, gripping us in an up-and-down, bipolar runaway sensations of thrill and boredom, glee and sadness and anguish, etc. We will lose our sense of stability.
We have to learn to pray, to converse with our Lord, to relate everything, including the negative events, to him. We should do everything to protect our intimacy with our Lord.