It is known from contemporary accounts that Monteverdi's sacred music, which he was now composing in exactly the same style as his secular, was winning great favor by the 1620s. That fact has cultural implications far beyond just the study of Monteverdi. The style of these pieces has been written of as a "mixture of transcendence and theatrical exaggeration," which puts it well in many senses. Theatre, as it is understood in this case, is the apotheosis of purely worldly art; all spectacle, seduction, glitter, and color. Blending that with the sense of religious transcendence, or, more properly, creating an association between religious and earthly sensations, is one of the things that these extraordinary works intend to do. This new style of church music, which existed in reaction to the aloof, austere older polyphonic styles, demonstrates one of the most positive aspects of the counter-reformation, its "sensuous piety."

The sense of religious ecstasy here arises from the very place that the transcendent and the worldly most obviously can meet: music itself. Listeners are treated to an almost oceanic roar of voice. It is the very same world inhabited by the later madrigals, after Book 5, but Monteverdi is here striving for an overall grandiose effect. His all too lush dissonances, his monstrous declamations, his splendidly dignified chord sequences, and exquisitely drawn out cadences seem designed to overwhelm with their splendor. The breakdowns of the music is into duets, which are mainly used to set off the grandiose passages more forcefully. Adoramus te, Christe covertly joins the ideal of musical seduction with religious feelings and religious edification, linking the concept of secular personal love with religious love. The first line of the text goes "O Christ, we adore thee and bless thee." It makes one think of those sumptuous pietas of the period that themselves exude an uncanny erotic power.

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