What drives us towards this intimacy? I believe it is simply how God made us because He wants us to ultimately seek perfect union with Him.  We "thirst" for God whether we realize it or not. 

We try to explain union with God by comparing it to our relationships with one another. However, we find that union with God is incomparably more intimate and more perfect than any of these relationships. Thus, only with God can we realize a truly perfect union. It is God's grace that not only effects union with Him but also in a way that is most perfect, being similar yet superior to any human relationship.

One of my favorite verses in Scripture is found in John 17:21 as follows:

"That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." (v. 21)

Christ here is praying that his disciples may be one, as He and the heavenly Father are one. He isn't expressing that the unity resemble His unity with the Father (the divine unity), yet He wants unity among persons to be a perfect and exact likeness in as far as it is possible for us to imitate the perfections of God. He wants everyone to believe that He is the Christ, the Savior of the World. Christ also said, no man comes to the Father except through me.

We are called to be one with God, if not as perfectly as the Son, at least in a manner similar to Him. We are to be one with Him not only by kinship and resemblance, but by a union so intimate that we form as it were one being with Him.

I Corinthians 10:17 says, "For we being many, are one bread, one body, all who partake of one bread." This refers to the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church that gives everyone who believes the opportunity to partake of the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ Himself. We who partake of the bread are united to one another and to Christ in His mystical body. The union of our body with the body of Christ is the means to attain the union, which grace effects between our soul and His divinity. Just as we become really one body with Christ, thus do we truly by grace become one spirit with God.

The great 19th century theologian Mathias Scheeben said, "Let us lose ourselves in order that we may find ourselves in God, or rather that we may find God Himself in all His glory and beatitude."

Isnt finding God Himself in all His glory and beatitude similar yet superior to experiencing love at first sight? We are all created in the image and likeness of God.

St. Paul described in I Corinthians 12:25-26 "the most intimate and indivisible union and community as being that there may be no disunion in the body, but the members may have care for one another. And if one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it, or if one member glories, all the members rejoice with it. For each loves himself in the others and the others in him. How great then, must be our love of Christ, whose body and members we are"?

The union among us should be like our union with God. It should mirror the exceedingly intimate union that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As St. Augustine said, "It is the Holy Spirit who is the bond of unity between the Father and the Son, and who embraces us all and unites us most intimately to each other."

Scheeben also said:

"What joy to belong to this vast, intimate communion of saints, and in it to possess, conjointly with the countless multitude of the blessed, all their glory and happiness! In a body each member has its own special aptitudes, but these do not for that reason belong less to the body and to all other members. We can, by the same token, therefore rejoice in the wisdom of the Cherubim, the flaming charity of the Seraphim, the dignity of the apostles, the courage of the martyrs, the prophetic vision of the prophets, the miracles of the confessors, the purity of the virgins. We may boast of these as our very own, for all proceeds from the same Spirit who dwells in us, and therefore all belongs to us as to the members of the same body. If, therefore, the possession of the body of a single saint is precious to us, how much the more ought we to prize our communion and fellowship in the Spirit of God with all the saints and heavenly spirits"!

"How greatly, on the other hand, are they to be pitied who through blind and foolish passion separate themselves from this..."

I ask you, "Where have you been and where are you going"?