DID YOU HEAR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT’S LONG TRACT CHANTED IN IMPECCABLE GREGORIAN CHANT? I DID!

I was blessed to celebrate the TLM’s First Sunday in Lent at Sacred Heart Church in Savannah, Georgia, I felt like Pope Leo who also on the First Sunday of Lent celebrated Mass at the Basilica of the Most Sacred Heart in Rome, near the Termini train station. 

However, poor old Pope Leo was not as fortunate as I was as I was able to celebrate the TLM with a grand, magnificent schola who chanted the Mass in a most marvelous way to include the Ancient Tract that has been heard and chanted for over 1,000 years!

But poor old Pope Leo had to put up with kitschy Italian folk music with guitar in a magnificent church edifice built not for that musical crap but for Gregorian Chant. 

And poor old Pope Leo did not get to hear the long Tract from the Roman Gradual that is even present in the revised, modern Roman Gradual but 99.9% of practicing Catholics who attend the Bugnini Mass have never, ever, heard! What a scandal!

To add insult to injury to our poor old Pope Leo, or salt to the wound, the Pope’s Lenten retreat Master reminded the pope later in the evening, on the very same day, the following:

For more than a thousand years the Roman liturgy of the First Sunday of Lent has retained, as a fixed element, a tractus of exquisite beauty (press tractus for the audio of it) that prepares for the Gospel -always the same one: Christ’s temptation in the desert,” said  Bishop Erik Varden, O.C.S.O., Prelate of Trondheim, Apostolic Administrator of Tromsø, and President of the Scandinavian Bishops’ Conference,  who is this year’s papal retreat master leading the meditations. Pope Leo XIV personally invited him to do so. 

You can tell that Pope Leo is saddened that he was not able to hear the Tractus at his modern Mass in Rome with guitar and kitschy Italian folk music, if one wants to call it music:

I, on the other hand, got to hear the ancient Tractus and it lasted 15 minutes to boot! I have a smile on my face after reading what Bishop Varden said to Pope Leo!