Blessed intimacy

She cries out to me in tears, “What’s it all for?” “Why am I doing all this for?” The this is being faithful to God’s ways even though all she sees is darkness around her and she is so close to breaking point. Beset with many challenges she finds it hard not to grasp happiness where she sees it, even though it may not exactly be the ‘right’ thing. In the face of despair and pain, it’s hard to encourage: “Pray” and “you must have faith” seem too simplistic and simply not enough.

All around me are women, bright, beautiful, accomplished daughters of God, lovely and gifted in their own unique ways, yet finding it difficult to live out their sexuality in a committed, spiritual fashion.

The answer is startlingly simple, yet, not easy to act on. It lies in the first dictum of Christian life as given by Jesus Christ: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Love God with your entire being. Surrender yourself totally. “Yet not my will, but Yours be done.” “Let it be with me according to Your word.” This means bringing Him into all areas of our beings and lives, and letting His light shine in even the darkest corner of our hearts.

Given the resounding “I, me, myself” mantra of the world and Freud’s pleasure principle lived out to the fullest in MTV surroundsound, loving God has become a call to radicality. A call to chastity and fidelity, to blessed intimacy.

Contrary to what most people think, a God-centred self-transcendence orients and sustains freedom. Living God’s ways need not mean a life without pleasure, restricted and dull. Life can be exciting: a glorious adventure every single day. We can become ‘fully alive’, when we allow ourselves to fall in love with Jesus and walk with Him, hand in hand.

As Lonergan puts it: “Being in love with God, as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion. All love is self-surrender, but being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations.”

Made in the image of God, we are brought to fulfilment when we are most in love with Him, and become most like Him. But, also being human, we will experience suffering and pain. There will be darkness and temptation. We can fall away and sin.

So how do we integrate our sexuality and spirituality and remain true to God and true to ourselves? Susan Muto in Late Have I Loved Thee says: “Blessed intimacy is the safest and strongest bridge between our belief in God and our lived obedience to the moral imperatives regulating sexual behaviour.” Thus, creating pockets of space and time where we come together and share intimate moments with the Trinity is our best bet in keeping our sexuality sacred and distinct from genitality.

I rely on His word, reflecting on the Bible daily, receiving the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, meditating in front of the Eucharist, spending quality time with loved ones and my Woman to Woman Ministry sisters and seeking the guidance of my spiritual director. Increasingly I find that the more I nurture my relationship with Jesus, the more this relationship transforms me and enriches my life.

The more I love Him and strive to make Him happy, the more He blesses me and fulfils my desires.