Fall 2007 Completion of what for many would seem a life’s work and accomplishment deserves attention, and this installment of News Notes aims to serve notice on that kind of accomplishment by a  member of ICS. This month ICS Publications took delivery of volume 2 of the Letters of St. Teresa of Avila. Fr. Kieran Kavanaugh’s name graces the cover as translator. Publication of any book by an author like Teresa catches the imagination, but how much more does arrival of this volume since it unlocks reserves of admiration for what Fr. Kieran has been able, with God’s grace, to bring to term. He now has to his credit modern translations in print of all the works of Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross, Carmel’s leading mystics and Doctors of the Church. The way forward from the beginning of this ambitious project until today took time and sustained effort. Accompanied earlier on by Fr. Otilio Rodriguez who came across the pond from Spain to live for several years in Washington, D.C., Fr. Kieran has poured into the impressive number of 4,740 pages of text (!) all his head, heart and soul could render of Teresa and John’s message, so that contemporary readers may appreciate the lessons of light emanating from those golden saints of Spain’s “golden” sixteenth century. (That count does not include, either, the Study Edition of Teresa’s Way of Perfection that he contributed to our catalogue in 2000.)                           His abundant personal bibliography shows these six volumes and many other works he has done for other publishers of Catholic literature—just see the back of the most recent volume in our series “Carmelite Studies,” A Better Wine: Essays Celebrating Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. at pages 337-47. In his dedicatory essay there Fr. Kevin Culligan traces the key role Fr. Kieran played in launching the Institute of Carmelite Studies and its ICS Publications. Poems of lyrical beauty, prayer exclamations, testimonies, penetrating commentaries of the soul’s movements, even sketches of Christ on the Cross—they are all found in the handy volumes that Kieran has created. He did not just translate, however. He supplied introductions, footnotes, indexes and biographical sketches that contextualize for us the spiritual world of those Discalced Carmelite pioneers who lived perhaps in “tough times,” but who also led others through times of ardent renewal. People tell us that volumes like the ones Fr. Kieran has provided for an English-language public have had a renewing effect in their lives. Had there not been the “jolly green giant” paperback volume of St. John of the Cross to start us off and lay the groundwork for many other Carmelite books, the formation of hundreds, even thousands, of religious and lay associates of our Order would have been a catch-as-catch-can proposition. Fr. Kieran would be the first to suggest we simply take this milestone in our stride and not make too much of it (since he is already working on a study edition of The Interior Castle). But St. Paul’s words in the title of this report do seem apropos and merited. Instead of trying to collect from our eminent translator any comments he might rather not pronounce, we do better to conclude with the following congratulatory thoughts expressed in A Better Wine by the respected spiritual theologian William Johnston, S.J. He stresses St. John of the Cross, but what he writes applies, also, to the translated legacy of St. Teresa that we owe to Kieran’s devoted service of La Madre’s texts:  “Only let me say that Father Kieran Kavanaugh's work on the Carmelite mystics opens the door to a dialogue with Asia that may dominate the theology of the third millennium. We sincerely thank him for his work of love, and we pray that it will continue in the years that lie ahead. Finally, let me add a personal note. I have benefited immensely from the work of Father Kieran. I have never felt any contradiction between my life as a Jesuit and the spirituality of the Carmelites. I recall how, as a young scholastic in Ireland, I told my spiritual father that I was reading St. John of the Cross. The holy man commented: ‘St. John of the Cross needs to be adapted for Jesuits. But to adapt a principle is not to water it down.’ In a world that is moving toward mysticism, the little Spanish friar will speak not only to Christians but also to Muslims and Jews, Buddhists and Hindus. As we thank Fr. Kieran, we pray that his work will help bring unity to our troubled world.”   ICS Publications gave permission for use of the Kavanaugh/Rodriguez translation of The Book of Her Life by St. Teresa to Indianapolis’ Hackett Publishing Company so it can serve classroom use in universities. It came as a pleasant surprise to receive for information the succinct and illuminating special introduction to this volume by Professor Jodi Bilinkoff of UNC at Greensboro. Twenty-five years ago this autumn Jodi Bilinkoff was invited to and participated in the Fourth Centenary Celebration of St. Teresa’ death organized by the Washington Province Centenary Commission in Washington, D.C. Title for the entire three-day symposium was “Teresa of Avila: A Woman for Her Times, Her Culture, Her Church, and of the Living Spirit.” Prof. Bilinkoff expounded on a theme which she later developed into a trend-setting book with the title The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. We look forward to receiving our copy of the Hackett edition of St. Teresa’s Life once it is printed and made available for sale next March. (Please direct inquiries to them, not to us, by using their website at www.hackettpublishing.com. In the meantime you can read a recent contribution of hers to Teresian scholarship: pages 107-22 in The Heirs of Saint Teresa present her essay “Touched by Teresa: Readers and Their Responses, 1588-1750.”