The wonder of Gregorian chant

A Christian Scientist (I presume, perhaps I shouldn't?) reflects on the power of the authentic voice of the Church:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1025/p18s02-hfes.htm

The wonder of Gregorian chant
Without knowing it, I had visited one of the world centers of Gregorian study – renowned to musicians, historians, and so many others.
By William Caverlee
In the spring of 1974, I was making plans for a backpacking tour of France ... an acquaintance suggested that I ought to try to hear some Gregorian chant while I was there. A strange suggestion, I thought.
At the time, I didn't know the first thing about Gregorian chant – nor, at the blithely self-assured age of 23, did I have any interest in Christian liturgy, Catholicism, or any other religious goings-on.....
before I left Vendée, I asked where one would go to hear Gregorian chant, and my friend's father said that a place in the Loire Valley was just the ticket. It was a Benedictine monastery called the Abbey of Solesmes ....
I spoke to my first monk – nondescript, amiable, middle-aged. Yes, of course, just throw your backpack under this table and hurry, hurry, you can go out that way, there, yes, toward that door.
Pushing open the massive door to the church was like entering a movie set. Inside, I found seats in the dim light and waited, not knowing anything. There were no other visitors.
The sound began quietly – literally from far away. From somewhere on my left, the sound grew in volume as it approached, then a door opened and the monks arrived, walking in pairs in a long, slow line, singing as they walked.
They wore black robes – no special dress or vestments – this was a simple vespers service. They filed their way past me and settled into their own places up front – in two halves, facing each other. The singing was in Latin – unaccompanied.
The old cliché was true: I had never heard anything like it in my life. Maybe clichés are about all one has at such unearthly, beautiful, inexpressible moments.
I carefully watched the faces of the men as they trooped past at the end of the service. They could have been a collection of Rotarians at any mid-size city in America – young, old, ordinary, grizzled, unremarkable.
It was not until a year later that I read up on the abbey. Without knowing it, I had visited one of the world centers of Gregorian study – renowned to musicians, historians, believers, unbelievers, any and all. Not only was I hearing this sublimely beautiful music for the first time, I was hearing it sung by its premier practitioners.
The distinctive sound of the Solesmes monks is the result of hundreds of years of daily practice, and goes hand in hand with their study of manuscripts, musicology, and liturgy.
It was as if I had stumbled into Oxford University, not aware that it had a reputation for scholarship and study. Or as if I had wandered into a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra without a clue about what I was hearing.