This book is the tenth in the Carmelite Studies series published by ICS Publications. This volume, though, does double-duty because it is also a Festschrift in honor of the 50th anniversary of Discalced Carmelite friar, Kieran Kavanaugh. The book consists of nine essays from nine different colleagues, all in the Discalced Carmelite Order and one essay by a Jesuit contributor, which they interestingly placed in an afterword to the volume.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a Festschrift (literally: festival writing) is a book published to honor a significant anniversary of someone working in academia. Colleagues are asked to submit essays publishable in their field of study and these are gathered and published together along with a forward eulogizing the hon-oree. In this case the honoree is Father Kieran Kavanaugh, who has worked all his life in promoting the Carmelite tradition. He is best known for translating the complete works of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila into English.

Like any book of separate essays (including this Festschrift) the final product is rather uneven. On the negative side, quite a few essays merely rework or rehash Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, or John of the Cross without any new insights or perspectives. When reading them, I thought that the original words of Teresa or Therese or John actually said it better.

On the positive side, though, some of the essays do indeed stand out as offering things new, especially in the synthesis of spirituality with psychology. Really good. Then there’s a real gem in the collection which was quite a surprise—a translation into English of set of ‘Constitutions’ written by Teresa of Avila and her collaborator and friend, Father Jerome Gratian.

A few years ago, a book was published called How Not to Say Mass by Father Dennis Smolarski. The book gave examples of mistakes, most quite comical, that have been done by priests saying Mass. It is a training manual, by offering only negative examples, of how to then properly say Mass (by avoiding these examples yourself). Well, it turns out that Teresa and Gratian did exactly the same thing. After completing the Constitutions of the newly reformed group of Carmelites called “discalced Carmelites” they then wrote another set of Constitutions of what not to do as a religious, which they called the Constituciones del Cerro. And they used a lot of humor in these ‘anti-constitutions.’ When reading this delightful gem, I laughed and laughed.

As to whether I give this volume a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down,’ I am going to give it a ‘thumbs sideways.’ Yes, it is a rather uneven volume with essays ranging from mere rehashings to profoundly insightful. But that translation of the highly humorous Constituciones del Cerro made reading the whole book worthwhile.