Intimacy
The most significant human word to make clear the sensation of encounter is the word intimacy.
Intimacy is the crossing and at the same time the result of the crossing of two interiorities.
Every individual, every “I” is always a closed and concentric circle by nature. Interiority is the result of organizing and living inward, in a perpetual inclination and convergence towards the center of oneself. Interiority has nothing to do with selfishness, although they are somewhat similar.
Now, two interiorities that leave their concentric circle and project each other, result in a third zone that we call intimacy (a climate? an impalpable reality?), a something, a perceptible but not explainable psychological reality; another zone different from the two interiorities, from the two people: something like a third “person” born from the two interiorities.
Now, two concentric interiorities that have gone outside themselves and have projected each other, “generate” the encounter, the intimacy. In psychological concepts we can conclude that if prayer is an encounter and the encounter is intimacy, prayer is intimacy with God.
Far from remaining in his sameness, God overflows his interiority and opens himself to us in various ways:
God is “in himself” and “by himself”; However, it “went out” of its “boundaries” and poured into the creatures. The universe is, therefore, an overflow of God himself.
Furthermore, in an admirable reaction of love, it was discovered to us, it was “declared” to us and it was freely offered to us to form with us a community of life and love. God wants to form a family, a society, in that region where the conjunction of God and man fits, the region of the spirit.
If man responds affirmatively to God’s invitation, we are already forming the community of life, as companions in life. The meeting presupposes a home atmosphere. Scripture explains this climate with expressions such as “dwell among us” (Jn 1:14), “we will make our mansion in it” (Jn 14:23), very homely expressions that evoke certain nuances such as warmth, joy, trust, tenderness, something like feeling inside a happy home.
This climate is where intersubjectivity is born and grows; that is, the projection of one subject onto another in a mutual interaction.
In a word: the encounter is an endlessly living and deepening of the interpersonal relationship, in an endearing and affective climate, turning the “I” over the “you”, between God and man.
Taken from the book “Show me your Face” Chapter 4, section “The Encounter” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga