On a recent summer Sunday morning, Alice and I took refuge from high temperatures and tourist-filled sidewalks to step into the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. Popularly known as “the Gesu” (the Italian word for “Jesus”), the monumental structure is described in a 19th century tourist guide as “the richest and most gorgeous church in Rome.” The sacred edifice is a twisting, swirling spectacle of cherubs, drapery, saints, and angels, flowing into a frescoed heaven, and as we sat in a sea of empty wooden pews, we wondered what this profuse world of imagery could have meant to ordinary Christians of the 16th century.

It was a very world very different than today’s. When the Gesu’ was consecrated in 1575, Rome was a city beset by scandals. Religious conflict was rife in northern Europe and England. But such things were far from the mind of early-morning worshippers talking quietly among themselves as they entered the massive edifice. It was a busy place. Throughout the morning Jesuit seminarians dressed in black gowns and carrying candles escorted priests in what would be an unbroken succession of Masses that continued up to the time of the day’s “Great Mass” at the high altar. Many of those attending were students. The Gesu’ served as the center of worship for students from the nearby “Roman College” where Jesuits provided classical, literary, and scientific education to young men 12 to 20 years of age at no cost. Often students were foreigners (German, French, Spanish, and English) who spoke no Italian and whose common language for learning and worship was Latin.

Not everyone was welcome, however. In a city overrun with prostitutes, women unaccompanied by a spouse or male relative were not allowed into the church. Visiting priests who were inappropriately dressed, or said Mass in an unorthodox manner, were discouraged from returning. Beggars were not admitted, but lay members of a religious confraternity were allowed to take up collections at certain times and distribute the proceeds to indigent pilgrims.

Despite these restrictions, the Gesu’ delivered religion on a grand scale. The wide nave held more than a thousand worshipers standing (there were no pews in earlier days). Through the morning, communion was periodically distributed at one of the side chapels, and confessions were heard by priests sitting in chairs with a kneeler attached. As the assembly grew in size,  sound became a problem. A decade earlier,  leading the  Council of Trent admonished worshipers to avoid “empty and secular conversation… noises and cries” in church.

In the later morning, the large bell in the campanile tolled announcing to those inside the church and in the neighborhood that the days ‘great’ Mass would take place.  They bell tolled again at the half hour mark and then as the ceremony was about to begin. An orchestra of brass and tympany musicians prepared to play, young men from the Jesuit’s Roman College, took their places in the choir lofts to the side of the high altar.  Torches, consisting of oil-soaked rags on long poles, were ignited. As Mass at the high altar began, low Masses ended, confessors left their confessional chairs, and the distribution of Eucharist ceased.

Even with the choir and musicians, the liturgy of the Great Mass was surprisingly restrained. A single priest in vestments, chosen for his powerful singing voice, presided. He assisted by two other priests wearing cassocks, white smocks, and stoles. The congregation was allowed to come unusually close to the altar, but it was still a Mass of the priest, a sacred making-present of Christ’s death, at which the laity — like the apostles at Mt. Calvary — observed but did not to interact. Only in the case of the scripture readings was the curtain of separation between clergy and the faithful pierced: the Epistle and Gospel, although proclaimed in Latin, were read in a loud voice to the assembled worshippers. But the ritual offere neither a sermon, nor the distribution of Communion, but moved inexorably forward to the elevation of the Holy Sacrament. Elements that followed seemed largely incidental and eventually a bell rang A bell rang indicating that Mass was over For many worshippers, however, the high point of the service had yet to begin.

At the sound of a second chime, worshipers began to gather in the center of the nave beneath the overhead podium awaiting the arrival of the day’s preacher. More than anything else, it was the quality of the Gesu’s religious oratory that accounted for the popularity of the church during the Baroque era. The magnificence of the edifice, the careful attention to the ceremonies, the music and lighting effects were all intended to prepare for the preaching of the Good News. For the Jesuits, the ministry of preaching was virtually an eighth sacrament.

Sunday worship culminated with the sermon and the large assembly of worshipers reciprocated in kind. “When the preacher appeared at the high pulpit” a visitor wrote “great multitudes…gather round about him with great silence and attention….”

Preaching at the Gesu’ focused on the practice of Christian life rather than theological abstractions. Rather than rehash religious controversies of the day, or demonstrate their classical erudition, the homilists provided what was described as “singular joy and marvelous edification of the Christian …exhorting to virtue, the fear of God’s justice, the hope of his mercy, and the love of his benefits.”  At the end of the sermon, a bell again sounded and the crowd begin to exit the Church.

The Gesu’ was and is the Mother Church of the Jesuit Society and a model for similar centers of ministry throughout the world.  In Rome, Masses and confessions were heard here daily, homilies preached Sunday morning and late afternoon through the year, and once a day through the entire season of Lent. It was a source of inspiration and vocations that fed the entire society. Within 40 years after the society’s founding, Jesuit membership swelled to 5000 and the order supported 144 colleges. In the process they are credited with having stopped the spread of Protestantism in Southern and Eastern Europe as well as reclaiming for Catholicism portions of Germany that had converted to Lutheranism. There are few places in Rome that can rival the Gesu’, for its long term impact on the course of Church history. We were blessed to have been there.