If you’re looking for some potent spiritual writing, look no further than the lyrics of…Bruce Springsteen.

Really.

Some months back, during Lent, I prepared a Good Friday reflection on the Seven Last Words of Christ that quoted from Springsteen’s “The Rising” (to my mind, still and always one of the most powerful meditations on 9/11).

Now, Christianity Today has hopped on the Bruce Almighty bandwagon, dissecting a couple of his recent albums:

“The Seeger Sessions,” all songs previously recorded by folk legend Pete Seeger, includes “How Can I Keep from Singing?”, “O Mary Don’t You Weep,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and “Eyes on the Prize,” an old Holiness hymn that declares, “I got my hand on the gospel plow / Won’t take nothing for my journey now / Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.”

“Devils & Dust,” meanwhile, is chock full of songs about hope, love, and redemption, as well as tales of sin, brokenness, and confession. The album’s spiritual highlight is “Jesus Was an Only Son,” which poignantly captures the bond between Mother and Child:

As he walked up Calvary Hill / His mother walking beside him / In the path where his blood spilled / Jesus was an only son / In the hills of Nazareth / As he lay reading the Psalms of David / At his mother’s feet …
Well, Jesus kissed his mother’s hands / Whispered, “Mother, still your tears” / For remember the soul of the universe / Willed a world and it appeared.

Springsteen told The New York Times that although he’s “not a churchgoer,” his music is “filled with Catholic imagery … a powerful world of potent imagery that became alive and vital and vibrant. … As I got older, I got less defensive about it. I thought, I’ve inherited this particular landscape, and I can build it into something of my own.”

Springsteen’s sentiment is one that has been expressed by countless Catholic artists down through the centuries, and it’s left us with some astonishing, moving, truly great art. I can’t help but think that Bruce Springsteen, in his way, is adding to that legacy.