From the Facebook page of my friend Frederica Mathewes-Green, whose husband pastors Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church in Linthicum, Maryland. She told me this story the other night after it happened, and now she’s made it public:

This past Thursday night, since my husband and I were traveling, one of our chanters, Ben, led the service. Only 4 other guys were present. At one point Ben began hearing a deep, male voice from the back of the room, joining in and chanting the ison. (The “ison” is a line of harmony in Byzantine chanting, and it’s tricky because in Byzantine music the intervals are different than we’re used to; they have extra notes in between our piano keys.) It’s hard to get the ison right, but whoever the singer was, he was chanting it with perfect pitch.

Ben figured that one of the other regulars had come in and was chanting from the back of the church. So when the service was over and everyone was talking by the church door, he said, “Whoever was doing the ison, it sounded pretty good.” But nobody else could take credit for it, though others had heard the voice too. Nobody had come in during the service.

“Since therefore we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” Heb 12:1