Abbey of Regina Laudis: Sister Genevieve Ceremonies & Celebrations

On September 16, 2023, the Abbey celebrated the Monastic Investiture of postulant Jacquelyn Nicole Lee who was clothed in the monastic habit and received the name Sister Genevieve. Monsignor Robert Tucker, the Abbey priest-in-residence, was the celebrant and homilist at the Mass. Jacquelyn chose to highlight her Texas heritage by wearing a white cotton dress and cowboy boots throughout the day. Jacquelyn’s parents Jon and Ginny, her brother Christopher, and a group of close friends came for the occasion.

The celebration took place on the Memoria of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, while still within the aura of Jacquelyn’s favorite feastday, the Feast of the Holy Cross. And Jacquelyn’s birthday! The East Coast also remained under the threat of Hurricane Lee, the only Category 5 hurricane of 2023.

Jacquelyn grew up in Houston, Texas. Her parents met at the University of Maine where they both earned undergraduate degrees. Jon’s degree was in chemical engineering, the same degree Ginny’s father had earned from the same university thirty years earlier. Soon after graduation, Jon got an engineering job in Houston and so that’s where they raised their family. Yet many summers the family of six would road trip from Texas to Maine to visit family scattered along the East coast. Jacquelyn always wanted to be able to call New England home.

Jacquelyn attended the University of Dallas where she received a BA in English with a concentration in Latin. After she graduated in 2019, she attended the Abbey’s internship program where she fell in love with working the land. Nevertheless, for the sake of doing something she always thought she would do, she took the next year to work at the magazine First Things in New York City. The experience was valuable for honing her skills as a writer and for solidifying her desire to enter the Abbey, which she did in September 2021.

May the warm and expansive spirit of Texas hospitality pervade this day’s
celebration, and counteract any spirits of storm or chill and chaos that might blow
with hurricane Lee, and for the protection of all in the path of the storm.

—From Mother Abbess Lucia's Prayers of the Faithful

Mother Abbess Lucia's Prayers of the Faithful at the Clothing Day Mass

In gratitude for the life and call of Jacquelyn Nicole Lee whose tenacity and passionate love for the King of Ages, incorruptible and invisible, the Only God, has led her to this day when she will receive a new name and monastic habit of a novice of Regina Laudis. In gratitude for God’s patience with us in our process, in celebration that we have arrived at this day.
Let us pray to the Lord.

Let us take to heart Christ’s words in the Gospel:

I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them. He is like a man building a house who made his foundation on rock.

For blessings upon all those who have supported Jacquelyn in her vocation: family, friends, neighbors, teachers, colleagues, fellow students and interns, farmers, and writers, some who are able to be with us today, but all with us in spirit. And let us pray especially for her parents, Ginny and Jon, who gave her a stable foundation in her family and her faith right from the beginning, raising her with the strong Catholic values of caring for each other and have allowed her to withstand the storms of our current culture, and to hold fast to the rock that is the truth of Christ.
Let us pray to the Lord

In wonder at the marvelous choreography of God, who has arranged for Jacquelyn’s investiture ceremony to be on her birthday, reminding her and all of us that even as she assumes a new identity in Christ, she is taking with her all the relationships and experiences that have come before, building on them in a new way as she advances now, slowly, step by step, through whatever crosses she will inevitably encounter on her way to discovering the fullness of love she desires.
Let us pray to the Lord

Sister Genevieve

For the intercession of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, may Jacquelyn be blessed with the courage and eloquence they had to speak the truth in perilous times, and may she receive the grace to participate in a new era of Evangelization, awakening people of today to the goodness of God through the medium of His creation. May she never lose the pristine joy she radiates in response to living close to the land and the animals she loves.
Let us pray to the Lord

For the Bethlehem Ambulance Association in gratitude for training Jacquelyn as an EMT and giving her the skills that allow her to put her compassionate and caring nature at the service of the health care of the community. For continued blessings on them and their important work.
Let us pray to the Lord

And may the warm and expansive spirit of Texas hospitality pervade this day’s celebration, and counteract any spirits of storm or chill and chaos that might blow with hurricane Lee, and for the protection of all in the path of the storm.
Let us pray to the Lord

This Mass is offered for Jacquelyn Nicole Lee on the day of her Monastic Investiture.
Let us pray to the Lord

Gallery of Monastic Investiture of Sister Genevieve