Bob HURD. Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People: Liturgical Foundations of Christian Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019, pp. 244 + xii. $24.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8462-7. Reviewed by Stephen WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357. 

            The name Bob Hurd will undoubtedly be familiar to many Catholic readers.  Hurd is a very prolific post-Vatican II liturgical music composer, writer of such well-known songs as Pan de Vida (1993), In the Breaking of the Bread (1984), and Gather Your People (1991).  A perusal of Hurd’s songs will reveal quite clearly an emphasis on ecclesial unity.  For example, hear the first and second verses of Gather Your People:  “Draw us forth to the table of life, brothers and sisters, each of us called to walk in your light” and “We are parts of the body of Christ, needing each other, each of the gifts the Spirit provides.”  In his new book,Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People:  Liturgical Foundations of Christian Spirituality, Hurd proves himself to be not only a talented musician and song artist but a capable theologian as well.  While his theological mind was well at work in his liturgical music, he is here able to put that pastoral experience to work in a sustained attempt to demonstrate how the praying of the liturgy serves as the foundation for a healthy Christian spirituality.

            Hurd’s agenda in this book is two-fold.  First, in the first four chapters, or part one, he postulates the essence of a Christian Spirituality based on the phrase “the life of God moving within us.”  In doing so, Hurd attempts to counter the commonly lived experience of self-sufficiency.  He states:  “We may think we believe in God, but if in the daily round we rest solely in ourselves, serving only the finite idols of our own making, then we are living a practical if unacknowledged atheism” (31).  Thus, Hurd introduces the theme of Christ’s kenosis, or self-emptying, which is required of every Christian in relationship with God, others and the world itself. 

            The second portion of Hurd’s agenda is to trace how this spirituality of emptying one’s self flows from the texts and actions of the eucharistic liturgy.  The fifth chapter serves as a defense of liturgical script (both text and action), which depends upon giving ourselves over to a symbolic world.  Hurd writes:  “We learn and rehearse the liturgical script so that we can perform it and welcome the self-bestowing mercy and love of God.  We become living icons, embodying, however imperfectly, this Presence to others.  We become the Body of Christ” (72).  Then, in chapters six through ten, while intertwining material from ecumenical sources, Hurd examines the various parts of the Roman Catholic Mass.  First, he develops a spirituality of gathering, which “calls us back to the Christ-self within, an identity we explicitly received in baptism” (113).  Next, the author turns to the Liturgy of the Word, and proposes a lectio-divina approach to contemplating the Word of God.  Noticeably absent in this chapter is a strategy to assist the assembly to hear the Word of God as a unified Body of Christ.

            Chapters eight and nine turn to the Eucharistic Prayer.  These are the densest of Hurd’s chapters and unfortunately read more as complex conference lectures.  Perhaps this is because Hurd relies heavilyon the contemporary theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, who speaks of the Eucharistic Prayer and communion as “gift” pointing to the necessary “return-gift” of ethical action in the world.  There is beauty in the theology Hurd works with here, however, it reads as unnecessarily complicated in relationship to the rest of the book.  Chapter ten departs from this overly-erudite style, as the author labors to communicate that the fundamental meaning of the Eucharist is to be sent as Christ’s Body into the world for the sake of building up unity and peace.  So many more pages could have been devoted to this theme.

            The forty plus years of experience that Bob Hurd has amassed composing and recording liturgical music, as well as leading countless workshops and classes aimed at helping parishes improve liturgical participation certainly mark him as someone who understands the need for Catholics to draw their spirituality from the liturgy.  However, what concerns me is that this book does not sufficiently ward off the temptation to make the Eucharist a sort of private devotion instead of the disciplined work of the corporate Body of Christ.  The author clearly does not intend this, as he describes communion “not as a moment in which the corporate body evaporates back into private individuals” but as “the most heightened actualization of Christ’s corporate Body” (228).  Likewise, he writes:  “Many parishes and dioceses have initiated the beautiful custom of having everyone stand until all have received, reinforcing perception of the communitarian nature of receiving.  Ritually it signals that my experience of communion is not over when I alone have received—it is over when all my sisters and brothers have also received” (229-230).  There is no doubt that Hurd believes the Eucharist is for ecclesial unity.  However, the book does not go far enough in suggesting ways in which the liturgical actio rehearses oneness within the Body of Christ.  Perhaps the problem here is that in the first four chapters of the book, even though the author describes spirituality as “the life of God moving within US,” it is difficult not to read this in terms of an individualistic perspective (i.e. “The life of God moving within ME”).  This perception is underscored by Hurd’s use of Buddhist philosophy in the first few chapters, which is beautiful in and of itself, but does not squarely fit with the Christian understanding of the self as a member of the Body of Christ.

            In the end, Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People is a very fine book.  In the next to the last page, Hurd sums up his work:  “This is the paschal mystery and its spirituality.  It is mediated from age to age by the church and its liturgy” (236).  The author is absolutely on target with all that the Church teaches about the sacred liturgy.  However, this book does not adequately challenge Christians to embrace a “corporate” spirituality, in which life is viewed as oneness in Christ.  What is missing is sufficient elaboration on how the elements of the Eucharist rehearse members of the Body of Christ to live as the Body of Christ.  How does the Eucharist call me to let go of the self in the act of gathering, in listening to the Word, in presenting gifts, in raising up the great prayer of thanksgiving, and in enacting the communion rite?  Answering these ritual questions would help the author better demonstrate the intimate connection between liturgy and life.