On 15 October, the solemn Mass in honour of Our Holy Mother Teresa of Ávila, presided over by Father General, was followed by the inaugural address for the academic year, given by Fr Silvano Giordano – From the International College of the Discalced Carmelites to the Teresianum: 100 Years of Research – and the annual report of the Director, Fr Emilio Martínez. In the evening, the Teresianum chapel hosted a performance of ‘Prima che fosse l’alba’ (Before the Dawn), a play about St John of the Cross created especially for the centenary of the International College (1926 – which also coincides with the centenary of his proclamation as Doctor of the Church and the tercentenary of his canonisation).
Set in Toledo in 1577, during the young friar’s nine months of imprisonment, the play recounts with intensity and restraint his journey through darkness, pain and inner transformation. Night, a physical and ambiguous presence, accompanies John of the Cross towards a new capacity to see, revealing to us a fragile and deeply human saint.
The Teresianum, with its college and its range of formation programmes, continues to place itself at the service of all for this mystagogy and this ‘mysticism of open eyes’, as Pope Leo also recalled recently in Spain, when he mentioned our two Holy Parents by name.
