The ‘Science of the Cross’ could never be an easy discipline, for each stage of learning brings us face to face with a demand which seems more impossible than the last. One of these lessons is repeated so insistently and frequently that we should become weary of it, did we not acknowledge in the depths of our heart that-we had never really learnt it; it is that which teaches us our uselessness. There are always a certain number of ardent souls who surrender themselves so fervently to the ‘Science of the Cross’ that their own uselessness is quickly made clear to them; they gladly give back their whole personality and their gifts to God, confident that he will use them in his good time and in his way; faced with the choice of ‘all or nothing’ they choose nothingness and receive all. Two such heroes of the spiritual life were Pere Jacques de Jésus, a French Carmelite, and Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Carmelite from Eegina Pacis Carmel in Cologne, stories of whose martyrdom, movingly told by members of their communities, have now been published