By RAY CAVANAUGH
An incorrigible alcoholic and estranged Catholic, Dublin laborer Matt Talbot finally reached a point where he felt he had no choice but to abandon the bottle and return to the Church.
The remaining four decades of his life were marked by hard work, prayer, and daily Mass. More than 90 years after his death, his story of redemption has inspired people on both sides of the Atlantic. June 19 marks his day of commemoration.
The second of twelve children, Talbot was born on May 2, 1856. Both his schooling and sobriety ended at age twelve. His first job entailed delivering messages for a company that handled the bottling tasks for Guinness.
Enjoying the perquisites, he came home inebriated and received a beating from his father, who also found him a different employer. But with the change of workplace, young Talbot switched to harder liquor.
At age 17, he entered the bricklayer’s trade. For years, he remained a diligent worker, but spent his entire earnings at the local pub. Some accounts have him getting into fights while drunk, but others contend he remained non-combative.
He did steal a vagrant musician’s flute (and only source of income), which he and his friends then pawned for drinking money (upon later changing his ways, Talbot searched far and wide — though without success — for his victim, in order to make restitution).
His consumption of alcohol eventually reached the point where it began to affect his workplace attendance.
The turning point came in 1884, when Talbot — penniless after having missed work due to drunkenness — was counting on his longtime pub companions to invite him along for drinks. But no such invitation was offered. A humiliated Talbot went home, surprising his mother with his early and sober arrival. He told her of his intention to “take the pledge” — which meant promising before a priest, no trivial matter in 19th-cenutry Ireland — to stop drinking.
She told him that if he pledged, he had better mean it.
Talbot first pledged three months “as he doubted his ability to keep it for any longer,” according to Sir Joseph A. Glynn, author of Matt Talbot. As with anyone attempting recovery, one crucial item was separation from one’s substance-abusing peer group. So, upon completing the day’s work, he would head to a church in a different part of the city.
He did encounter his former drinking buddies and, quite injudiciously, once even accepted their invitation to join them at the pub. But he managed to abstain from alcohol, instead drinking a mineral water.
He avoided the pub in future, opting instead for church, and handed over his wages to his mother. It wasn’t easy: His cravings were strong. A silent but powerful voice within kept telling him that he would fail. But he fulfilled his three-month pledge, at which point he renewed, this time for one year. Upon fulfilling that period, he pledged for life.
Writing the introduction to a 1977 edition of Glynn’s biography, Catherine Rynne describes Talbot as “a worker-contemplative” who first “prayed in desperation,” then later in “contentment,” and finally in “joy.” Some years he reportedly gave away 60 percent of his income.
As Talbot was always bashful when giving, one continual recipient of his charity recalled that “the little man” would run away before he could even get the chance to thank him.
Along with much prayer and charity, he kept an austere way of life, fasting often and sleeping on a plank bed with no mattress. A female acquaintance once suggested marriage. He gave the matter thought and prayer, before arriving at the answer: no. He told the young lady he would remain single for life, and he did. Also remaining unmarried was his older brother, a teetotaler who lived into his sixties. All six of the other brothers died either in youth or young adulthood.
Remaining sober for more than 40 years, Talbot later worked as a storekeeper, before health problems forced him into retirement. He died of a heart attack at age 69 on June 7, 1925, after having collapsed while hurrying to Mass on an abnormally hot Dublin day.
Those undressing his body discovered three chains wrapped around him — part of his penitential regimen. These chains elicited curiosity about his life that survives to this day.
Initially buried in a pauper’s grave in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, his body was moved to a more prominent vault on the grounds before its relocation to a shrine built in his memory at his former parish, the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes.
A year after Talbot’s death, Glynn’s short biography on his life saw print and sold more than 120,000 copies in its first edition, according to the website for the Matt Talbot Committee (mattt
albot.ie). Six years after his death, Dublin’s archbishop launched an inquiry into Talbot’s life and holiness. He was declared venerable by Pope Paul VI on October 3, 1975.
Now, in order to become a saint, he needs miracles attributed to him. As pointed out in Kenneth L. Woodward’s book Making Saints, Talbot’s case raises the question as to whether or not the Church should accept miracles involving moral transformations, as opposed to miracles involving the sudden reversal of grave physical illness. If moral miracles were sufficient, Talbot well might’ve been canonized already.
His impact in Ireland was immediate after his death. And the U.S. saw a Matt Talbot movement surfacing in the 1940s, when recovering alcoholics began organizing multiple-day Matt Talbot retreats to focus on sobriety.
The northeastern states have been especially active in these retreats, which are open to non-Catholics as well. What started with one retreat group of 27 members has blossomed into about 200 groups and almost 110,000 members, according to Matt Talbot Group M74, based in Brooklyn, N.Y.
In addition to these groups and outings, the Matt Talbot Center has operated in Seattle, where it serves to support homeless persons seeking lives free of drugs and alcohol. Other programs with similar goals exist in such cities as Cleveland and Milwaukee.
Talbot’s venerable example has ventured far beyond his native Dublin, and though canonization remains uncertain, his influence has been more profound than that of many a saint.
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