What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets

As a teenager in the ’90s in North America, it was hard to miss this song. This was about a decade before I was received into the Catholic Church.

I don’t pretend to understand all that the song says, and the parts that I don’t understand, I obviously can neither agree nor disagree with… but when I was growing up, these words got imprinted on my memory.

Although I wasn’t Catholic, I had enough of an understanding to think, “But that’s what Christians believe: that God was one of us and has a human face.” Only after my conversion did I realize, “And Jesus stands, side by side, in his humanity with each one of us. He’s there, so are the saints, and the angels, with the slob and the stranger on the bus trying to make his way home. That’s the heart of contemplation lived in the world.”

We don’t see his face in and behind people without believing “in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets.”