About Monica Lapuente

Monica Zingale Lapuente was born in Brooklyn and raised in
Mahopac, New York where she was educated by the Sisters
of the Divine Compassion at St. John the Evangelist School. These
women “set the stage” and planted the seeds by expanding her
vision of the world and God: to behold the beauty and embrace
the treasure the Babe of Bethlehem. The Sisters became
a visible beacon of hope and a credible witness of mercy and
tenderness in her life.

After graduating Mahopac Central High with honors, she
completed her undergraduate degree in liberal arts with a minor
in the performing arts at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
Later she earned post-graduate degrees at the University of
Memphis in Instruction and Curriculum Leadership. As a mother
and educator, she loves to compose songs which tap into the
natural joy, purity, and genius of her children and students and has
been recognized on the city, state, and national levels for her
creative accomplishments in the music, education, and literary realms.

A Third Order Carmelite and presently a Cloistered Heart in formation,
Monica is committed to several ministries in her parish.
Because nuns are part of her bloodstream, she is
especially devoted to helping inspire vocations to the religious life
through her Monastery Belles Ministry at Church of the Incarnation
in Collierville, St. Mary’s School in Jackson, both St. Agnes Academy
and Sacred Heart Church in Memphis, Tennessee
along with her 2011 and 2015 Come, Walk with Me publications.

Through her work, observers and readers are taken on an esthetic,
heart-warming historical, adventurous and transcontinental pilgrimage
with 391 Catholic women religious – the great defenders of the Faith –
from the inception of the first Order of Benedictines in 525 A.D.
into the third millennium, and are also provided a stepping stone
on their earthly quest for sainthood.

A little more than 1600 years ago, St. Monica’s tears, prayerful perseverance, and hope gave way to God’s sweet grace and bountiful blessings.  Today, Monica’s tears, salt water, like the sea itself, are her prayers – tears that are not only the material expression of her maternal heart, but sacramental.