The Commissariat of Sicily wished to remember the 450 years of the founding of the Duruelo monastery by celebrating a course of spiritual exercises for religious and laity in the Spirituality House of the Villasmundo Carmel. The title of the exercises was taken from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 24: “for those who are called, Christ crucified is the power of God and wisdom of God.” On November 28, 1568, when Brother John of St Matthias, together with his companions, took the new habit of Carmel, he assumed a new name: Brother John of the Cross. The reflections of these days of exercises have concentrated on his choice of this religious surname, with illumination from the text of The Science of the Cross of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein.
