I dare say that, without my being aware of it, the chant really impressed me more than anything else ... At the first impact I was so moved by the chant, which you must remember I had never heard a note of in all my life before, as to be almost frightened. This was not ancient architecture such as the world had ceased to build. This was not the sculptures of Chartres or Easter Island such as the world had ceased to make. This was not the pictures of Giotto or Ajanta such as the world had ceased to paint. This was something alive, living, coming from the hearts and minds and bodies of living men. It was as though God were continuing the work of creation here and now and I was there to hear, to see - even almost to touch. I was lucky, was I not? For, after all, as I have often since discovered, it is possible to sing the chant in such a way as to make you wish that a millstone were around your neck and you in the depths of the sea. But there, at Louvain, after the slow procession of incoming monks and the following short silence when I first, all unprepared and innocent, heard: Deus in adjutorium ... I knew, infallibly, that God existed and was a living God - just as I knew him in the answering smile of a child or in the living words of Christ. << less