John of the Cross in the context of "Fortín San Juan de la Cruz"

The Discalced Carmelites, formally the Order of the Discalced Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (Latin: Ordo Fratrum Carmelitarum Discalceatorum Beatae Mariae Virginis de Monte Carmelo) or the Order of Discalced Carmelites (Latin: Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum; abbrev.: OCD; sometimes called in earlier times Latin: Ordo Carmelitarum Excalceatorum), is a mendicant order in the Roman Catholic Church with roots in the eremitic tradition of the Desert Fathers. The order was established in the 16th century, pursuant to the reform of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance, by two Spanish saints, Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. Discalced is derived from Latin, meaning "without shoes".

The third order, which is affiliated to the Discalced Carmelites, is the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites.

The Carmelite Monks or Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel are a public association within the Diocese of Cheyenne, dedicated to a humble life of prayer. The Wyoming Carmelites claim loyalty to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and to the Carmelite charism. Their life includes strict separation from the world and the living of the cloistered Carmelite spirituality and way of life established by John of the Cross and Teresa of Jesus. In accord with the Carmelite Rule, they engage in manual labor and the study of Carmelite spirituality in the solitude of the mountains, with the firm hope of attaining to Union with God.

Teresa of Ávila OCD (born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada; 28 March 1515 – 4 or 15 October 1582), also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer.

Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men. The movement was later joined by the younger Carmelite friar and mystic Saint John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites. A formal papal decree adopting the split from the old order was issued in 1580.

New Christian (Latin: Novus Christianus; Spanish: Cristiano Nuevo; Portuguese: Cristão-Novo; Catalan: Cristià Nou; Ladino: Kristiano Muevo; Arabic: المسيحيون الجدد) was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction referring to the population of former Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and their respective colonies in the New World. The term was used from the 15th century onwards primarily to describe the descendants of the Sephardic Jews and Moors that were baptized into the Catholic Church following the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, was an anti-Jewish law made by the Catholic Monarchs upon the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. It required Jews to convert to Roman Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos (or in a more derogatory fashion Marranos), while the Muslim converts were called Moriscos.

Because these conversions were achieved in part through coercion and also with the threat of expulsion, especially when it came to the Jews, the Catholic Inquisition and Iberian monarchs suspected a number of the "New Christians" of being crypto-Jews. Subsequently, the Spanish Inquisition and then the Portuguese Inquisition was created to enforce Catholic orthodoxy and to investigate allegations of heresy. This became a political issue in the kingdoms of the Portuguese–Spanish Union itself and their respective empires abroad, particularly in Spanish America, Portuguese America, and the Caribbean. Sometimes "New Christians" travelled to territories controlled by Protestant enemies of Spain, such as the Dutch Empire, the early English Empire, or Huguenot-influenced areas of the Kingdom of France such as Bordeaux, and openly practiced Judaism, which furthered suspicion of Jewish crypsis. Nevertheless, a significant number of those "New Christians" of converso ancestry were deemed by Spanish society as sincerely Catholic and they still managed to attain prominence, whether religious (St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of Ávila, St. Joseph of Anchieta, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Tomás de Torquemada, Diego Laynez, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suárez, and others) or political (Juan de Oñate, Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, Hernán Pérez de Quesada, Luis de Santángel, and others).

In Christian theology, divinization ("divinization" may also refer to apotheosis, lit. "making divine"), or theopoesis or theosis, is the transforming effect of divine grace, the spirit of God, or the atonement of Christ. Although it literally means to become divine, or to become God, most modern Christian denominations do not interpret the doctrine as implying an overcoming of a fundamental ontological difference between God and humanity; for example, John of the Cross (AD 1542–1591) indicated that while "God communicates to it [the individual soul] His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has", yet "it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before".