Helen McMonagle says of “It is I,” the first track of her new collection of Christian music, “I feel uncomfortable saying it wrote this because I actually took dictation, words and music, from the Holy Spirit after praying for inspiration before my performances at the yearly Vigil for Victims of Serious Crime and the Divine Mercy Mass. Both events require a type of music that will bring comfort to people in who are in some type of intense emotional pain, and the spirit made it clear to me that the song ‘It is I’ was a personal message from the Lord to both these groups of people.”

For ten years, Helen, a cotemporary Christian singer-songwriter, has volunteered her angelic voice and message of hope for the Vigil for Victims of Serious Crime, sponsored by the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office in Pennsylvania and designed to comfort those who have lost a loved one to serious crime, and at the Divine Mercy Mass, a special devotion held the Sunday after Easter every year, sponsored by the Abbey Book and Gift Shop in Lancaster.

A professional vocalist and guitarist, Helen holds several positions involved with liturgical music in the Lancaster Catholic community. She is music director of the St. John Neumann Center of Millersville University, where she leads the music for Mass each Sunday; the Liturgical Music Director at St. Leo’s School, where she serves on the school’s spiritual life committee and directs the Eighth Grade Choir and the “Choir of the Week”; and her biggest responsibility, Music Director of St. Leo’s Parish, where she serves on the liturgy committee, and directs the popular contemporary music group Steadfast.

A native of Philadelphia, Helen has no formal music training. Instead she credits her musical education to being raised as one of eleven musical children and singing in organized choruses for 12 years. She sang professionally in the Philadelphia and New Orleans areas for a variety of upscale hotels and restaurants and has sung at over 200 weddings in a ten-year period.