Composer, teacher, facilitator, storyteller, community animator
Monica Brown
Her music is sung all over the world by people of all ages in schools and parishes, in family homes and religious communities, in hospitals and prisons and in places of gathering and celebration.
Monica’s workshops, retreats, faith celebrations and concerts leave people wanting more of the God she somehow manages to make real and tangible through her songs and creatively integrated presentations.
But none of this really tells us about her or the passion in her life for God, her unique ability to enable people to come into an experience of God, whatever their circumstances may be.
So who is this woman whose songs are feeding the spiritual hunger in so many?
Internationally renowned, Monica is one of Australia’s most highly respected Christian composers and workshop facilitators. She began her ministry as a teacher and went on to do additional studies in spirituality, pastoral guidance, liturgy and creative arts.
Monica was awarded a Masters Honours Degree in Education from the Australian Catholic University, having completed her thesis on spiritual development and the integration of the creative process. Her thesis work won the University Research Award of the Year for the State of New South Wales.
Her highly acclaimed book, Embodying The God We Proclaim – Ministering as Jesus Did, reflects something of the depth of spiritual insight that typifies her ministry. The insights and wisdom of the New Universe Story and eco-theology underpin all that Monica offers.
Monica has composed and recorded 20 collections of songs for children and adults, including the universally appealing One People One Land, and has written and produced videos and other resources in the area of eco-spirituality and faith enrichment.
Her original music is used to celebrate, to comfort, to heal, and to give expression to the Sacred. Monica’s songs touch the hearts of so many in the ordinary and far-from-ordinary moments of life.
Monica is the founding director of Emmaus Productions (1984) and the creator of the much-respected liturgy website LiturgyRitualPrayer.com which was under her direction for 17 years.
In 2022, together with fellow Core Team members Donna Fyffe and Hilary Musgrave, Monica designed, developed and produced Thresholds of Transformation, an organic change process for personal, communal and systemic transformation inspired by Laudato Si’ – this unique integrative resource is aimed at promoting the new world order of integral ecology that Pope Francis calls all people to embrace.
Over and above all this, Monica is a woman who has allowed her heart to be made sensitive and alive to God in all the arts, in culture, prayer and scripture. She has a special ability to enable people to get in touch with a sense of God and the Sacred in their lives.
Monica’s Personal Reflections
About The Mary Brown Memorial Foundation
My faith and sense of God have been shaped and formed by my family and extended family, as well as through my schooling and religious formation in the Benedictine tradition, with the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. This tradition continues to enrich my life now through my commitment as an Oblate of the Good Samaritan Congregation.
My mother, Mary Brown, was truly the embodiment of Christian virtue. She lived the Gospel values by walking the extra mile, turning the other cheek, feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger, the lonely and the sick. She stretched our hearts as a family beyond comfort and selfishness.
From a young age, I was inspired by my mother’s outreach and generous self-giving. She has been the inspiration of my ministry and so it was fitting that we establish a foundation in her name. As a registered charity, The Mary Brown Memorial Foundation, through the ministry of Emmaus Productions, honours my mother’s amazing spirit and continues her good works.
My father, Francis Brown, has also been a huge influence in my life and ministry. Dad quietly, faithfully supported Mum in all she did. I learnt from my mother what ministry is really about and from the give and take between my parents, what unconditional love is about.
Nursing my mother in 1988 as she suffered with terminal cancer was one of the most precious experiences of my life. I learnt much about the struggle between hope and despair, life and death, holding on and letting go, in fighting to keep her alive and yet knowing that our real role was to help her let go into God, which I believe was her deepest longing. Singing in her ear, as she lay dying and witnessing her final surrender was an awesome privilege; a moment that has marked me for life.
At present, I live next door to my twin sister, Elizabeth, and her family. Being an identical twin to Elizabeth is such a beautiful blessing for me. She and I and my three brothers and older sister are extremely close. They are the most wonderful people I know.
There have been two major crossroads in my faith journey that have brought me to this stage of my life. Both occasions found me discerning the context of my faith commitment. There was in me a deep desire to send my roots down, but through circumstances beyond my choosing, I found that God was in fact uprooting me.
Despite what seemed to be a clear and deep conviction in my heart about the direction of my life, God led me in ways I would never have imagined, beyond what I knew, to roads I would never have chosen. I would never have dreamt, for example, that I would compose songs. The songs that come to me are more a gift to me than to anyone else. They are borne out of moments of grace, insight and daily living.
The result of that first uprooting was the emergence of my ministry and the establishment of Emmaus Productions. The second uprooting led me back to my ministry with a deeper commitment to the movement of God in my life through my ministry and a renewed appreciation of the ministry being about God’s way and not my own. Through this, I have learnt so much about finding God in the circumstances of my life, of living on the edge of faith, trust and hope.
—Monica Brown