Venerable Matt Talbot: An Extravagant Lover of God

“Clinging to Onions:  Venerable Matthew Talbot (1856-1925)”
by Rick Becker 

January 28, 2017

http://clingingtoonions.blogspot.com/2017/01/venerable-matthew-talbot-1856-1925.html

True lovers love extravagantly, and Matthew Talbot was an extravagant lover of God. This Franciscan tertiary's penitential practices might come across as excessively severe today, but they were in fact unabashed outpourings of a soul totally abandoned to the Lord.

Talbot was born in Dublin, Ireland, the second of 12 children in a poor working-class family. With only a single year of formal schooling from the Christian Brothers, the 12-year-old Matthew started working to augment his father's meager wages and help support the family. His first job was running messages for a wine merchant, and Matt Proved himself to be a hardy and dependable employee.

Through the influence of his mother, Talbot was initially inclined to moral living, but the bad example of his fellow workers took its toll on the impressionable youth. Talbot's work afforded him easy access to alcohol, and his introduction to strong drink quickly developed into a full-blown addiction. He always managed to keep down a laboring job of one kind or another, but Matt's drinking inevitably disrupted his personal affairs. His wages were increasingly devoted to purchasing liquor instead of helping his family; he once sold his own shoes for another drink.

By the time Matt was 28, his derelict condition had progressed to the point that even his drinking buddies avoided him. Desperate, ashamed, and abandoned, he approached a priest one night for confession and followed it up by taking a three-month pledge of abstinence. Talbot doubted his ability to stay sober for any length of time, but he prayed hard, took one day at a time, and did indeed stay dry. He subsequently pledged to forego alcohol permanently, redirecting his focus toward personal mortification and the interior life.

Talbot took to sleeping no more than four hours a night, and that on a bed of planks with a pine wood block for a pillow. He arose every morning for several hours of prayer on his knees before attending Mass at 6:00 a.m. Then he was off to the lumberyard, where he worked a 10-hour day as he had before his conversion, but now silently communing with his Savior as he labored, and taking every opportunity to exhort his co-workers to sanctity.

Matt fasted often, but even when he didn't, he routinely skipped lunch, spending that time on his knees, and eating only a very light supper after work. He spent his evenings in prayer, or attending a variety of pious gathering, before retiring to bed by 11:00 p.m.

The list of his regular devotional practices is extensive, including 15 decades of the Rosary and the Way of the Cross daily, novenas prior to every feast, substantial spiritual reading, and a variety of popular devotions. On Sundays he would remain in his parish church most of the day to attend every mass. Talbot's was a life wholly given over to the things of God, and he took the greatest joy in lavishing himself on his Creator.

Upon the recommendation of his confessor, Talbot joined the Third Order of St. Francis to add structure to his devotional life and further reinforce his sobriety. It was an ideal match, for Matt had already adopted a Franciscan way of life as if by intuition. Like the Poor Man of Assisi, Talbot embraced poverty and got by on only a fraction of his already meager income. He donated the rest to charity and the missions, and often supplemented the take-home pay of fellow workers who headed large families.

Matt also mirrored St. Francis in sharing Christ's physical agonies. But whereas Francis bore that suffering literally in the stigmata, Talbot took it on by means of heavy chains wound around his body – a mortification that was hidden his whole life and only revealed as nurses prepared his body for burial.

The glow of sanctity attracted many to the simple Talbot, and he gained a reputation as a powerful intercessor, despite his efforts to remain hidden in his life of devotion. So it was that he was sorely missed by many when his penitential lifestyle so strained his health that he had to be hospitalized for lengthy stays on two different occasions. In the end his ill health caught up with him, and he died outside his parish church on the way to a second Mass on Trinity Sunday, 1925. Pope Pius XII introduced Talbot's cause in 1947, and a decree on his virtues was issued in 1975.

One reflection on Matt Talbot

[This slightly edited article is available at http://fatherdoyle.com/2012/06/08/thoughts-for-june-8-from-fr-willie-doyle-2./. . References to Matt Talbot periodically appear on the website.]

Venerable Matt Talbot

I do not want, in fact I forbid you, to be imprudent in the matter of corporal penances. But, my dear child, if you let a whole fortnight go by without any self-inflicted pain, can you honestly look Jesus in the face and say, “I am like to Him”?

COMMENT: The idea of self-inflicted pain is not popular in contemporary spirituality. Oddly enough though, it seems wildly popular in modern secular culture with its fad for physical fitness and punishing bodies in the gym in order to make them ever more attractive…


Physical mortification was the norm in Fr Doyle’s day [1873-1917] – there was nothing unusual in it all. While Fr Doyle was quite severe on himself on occasion, he always urged caution on the part of others. However, despite his caution, he issues an interesting challenge today – do we really imitate the crucified Christ if we do not do penance ourselves, even in some small fashion?


Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Venerable Matt Talbot. Matt died in 1925. He was close to the Jesuits and attended the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street almost every day for many years. Fr Doyle was based in Belvedere School (about 200m from this church) for about a year around 1909. It is probable that he lived in the community in Gardiner Street. It seems more than likely that Fr Doyle crossed paths with Matt Talbot at some stage. However, we have no record of such an event, so we can only speculate. Similarly, we have no record of Matt having read O’Rahilly’s biography of Fr Doyle. Yet, Matt – despite being an unschooled labourer – was a voracious reader of spiritual literature and especially of spiritual biographies. It would be most strange if he never read this wildly popular book about a heroic local Jesuit. We know that he used to give books away or lend them to others, so perhaps he had it and passed it on. We shall never know…


As is well known, Matt dropped dead on the street while on the way to Mass. It was this sudden death that allowed his penitential chains to be found on his body. Matt is held in very high esteem all around the world, but especially in Dublin. His harsh penances did not repel people – on the contrary his asceticism is fundamentally part of his charm. His chains are important relics and an important part of his story and spirituality. Matt is not alone in this – many of the most popular saints lived deeply penitential lives, and it has not diminished their popularity one bit. How odd then if anyone were to think that Fr Doyle’s asceticism would make him less appealing to the public…


Matt’s example also teaches us a profound lesson in avoiding sin. After his conversion, he was determined not to fall back into alcoholism. He prayed hard, but he also took action – he organised his life in such a way that he would not face temptations. He kept himself busy and away from pubs and he even made it something of a rule never to carry money with him in case he was tempted to buy a drink. Do we avoid temptations with the same determination and single-mindedness that Matt had?

Matt’s heroic virtues have been formally recognised by the Church; now a miracle is required for his beatification. Ireland needs saints! We need beatifications and canonisations! Let us remember to pray through the intercession of Matt Talbot when we are in need of help.

Self-Harm

Dr. Heather Barnett Veague has recently published the book, Cutting and Self-Harm (2008), for teens and young adults. While she includes present day age-appropriate case studies in this text of important psychological disorders, it may be arguably inappropriate to have included a side-bar story about Matt Talbot, considering the time and place in which he lived, historical influences, and the guidance of a spiritual director. Most Christian ascetics choose a life of penance and mortification of the soul not out of masochist leanings, but for the imitation of Christ in real-life.

The first link includes the brief story about Matt, pages 14-15, but most of the book is not available for preview. (You may need to insert “Matt Talbot” in the “search in this book” box.) The second link provides most of the text of the book, but the Matt Talbot pages are not readable.

http://books.google.com/books?id=yRyOKeMVNtsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Cutting+and+Self-Harm++By+Heather+Barnett+Veague&source=bl&ots=3l-7SzVzCT&sig=s06acXaFAAfD1NFGc4EUstfjtm0&hl=en&ei=zlqOTc7zBcLytgfDyoCuDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.scribd.com/doc/50673716/1/What-Is-Self-Harm-1#

Mortification

"Mortification" is a term that periodically appears in reference to Matt Talbot. These two links provide an introduction to its etymology, forms, purposes and practices:

Mortification of the flesh in various religions and cultures Mortification in Roman Catholic teaching

St. Louis Marie de Montfort and Matt Talbot

Today, April 28, is the feast day of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, whose writings had a significant influence on Matt Talbot during the last forty years of his life. The chains that were found on Matt's body after his death were part of his "Total Consecration to Mary," which was popularized by de Montford. Today, however, the wearing of a chain or medal reminding one of holy slavery to Mary is an optional practice.

Links for further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Montfort

one biography of St. Louis de Montfort's life

St. Louis de Montfort's works and articles about his spirituality.

Online texts of Louis de Montfort's works

Staggering to Heaven

This is one of the most detailed articles about Matt's life and recovery.

Staggering to Heaven

PATRICIA TREECE

The friend of God whose life ended on a Dublin sidewalk on June 7, 1925, was one of those hidden holy. Like the majority of this quiet legion, the neatly but shabbily dressed, old workingman who collapsed and died on his way to hear a second Sunday morning Mass should still be known only to God. Yet, having let him live his sixty-nine years in obscurity, God called attention to Matthew Talbot immediately after his death. Since 1975, in fact, Talbot is one of the Church’s official Venerables (literally, one worthy of veneration on the basis of exhaustively verified heroic virtue) — thus only a miracle away from being beatified and another from being canonized. If either happens, he becomes the Church’s first known alcoholic saint.

ALCOHOLISM

Born on May 2, 1856, in a Dublin tenement, Matthew Talbot was the second son of Charles Talbot, a tiny bantam rooster of a man who did day labor on Dublin’s docks in spite of his seemingly inadequate size. Unusually loud, aggressive, and downright quarrelsome when drinking — which he usually was — Charles was married to a devout woman who bore him twelve children. Nine survived to crowd with their parents into quarters that were always rented and always woefully cramped. That Charles and all of his sons but the eldest — a mother’s boy who remained a bachelor teetotaler — spent most of their meager wages on drink seems less a wonder than that Elizabeth Bagnall Talbot did not seek some opiate herself.

Matt Talbot’s mother dragged her underfed, miserable brood through eighteen moves in twenty years, always living in tenements without indoor plumbing or even running water, always struggling to get the landlord paid and food on the table. Like countless Irish women, she made this Way of the Cross under the scourge of political and social inhumanities deepened by her menfolk’s alcoholism.

The second son, Matt, was repeatedly truant from the special classes the Christian Brothers ran to give slum boys a smattering of literacy and religious understanding before they went to work. By age twelve, Talbot was already working as a messenger boy in that pre-telephone or fax era. And he was already drinking.

Alcoholism, it’s been said, is just a matter of poor luck in the biochemical draw. But biochemistry is not the only factor. One need claim no great insight to see the appeal of the pub in Dublin, a city of bone-chilling damp, penetrating rains, and saucy breezes that even in summer can quickly reverse one’s umbrella. Pubs beckon one out of weather’s miseries to a comfortable seat in a dry, cheerfully lit place where laughter and stories drown out the whipping of the rain and a long swig of porter or whisky races into one’s chilled body as a quickening arrow of life and warmth.

LIFE IN THE PUB

In the 1875-85 Ireland of Talbot’s young manhood there was a second impetus to build a life around pub and alcohol: the sheer overcrowding of home life. Even a quarter century after Talbot’s death, an American priest researcher would still find many Dublin working class families, including relatives of Talbot’s, crammed into one rented room. One working-class couple with sixteen children rejoiced in 1947 to have moved from one and then two rooms to the ultimate to be hoped for: rented quarters of four rooms (rooms, not bedrooms) for the fourteen members of the household.

So Matt Talbot was a drunk among thousands. There were so many like him in his day that it was not uncommon for employers to pay their laborers in the pub or to deliver some men’s pay directly to the pubkeeper, who would keep a running account and urge his clients not to drink so much they had to go dry before the next payday.

By 1884 Talbot — scrawny and undersized like his dad — had gone from messenger boy to dock worker to hod carrier. As a hod carrier — the unskilled laborer who trots donkeylike with a heavy load of mortar or bricks alongside the bricklayer — Talbot was known for hard, fast work. With many Dublin buildings made of brick, the employer had a whole squad of bricklayers and hod carriers and would put little Talbot out front to set the pace.

After a ten-hour day of fast-paced toil, the slope-shouldered young worker would head for the pub, where he was known as an opinionated, hot-tempered man who argued and even fought like his father, but also as a generous sort who would stand drinks all around on payday. If the money ran short, Talbot was not averse, a companion remembered, to joining a brother or friend in stealing a pig’s cheek from a bar owner or even a violin from a poor wandering fiddler, rushing out to sell it and drinking up the proceeds.

He just had a scruple — a bit of cowardice, an accomplice later termed it — about being the one actually to pinch the item. Maybe he used foul language when drunk — recollections vary — but there seems agreement that Talbot had no use for dancing, playing cards, joining in sports, or chasing women. “He was interested in only one thing — drinking,” a friend from those years later recalled. As for religion, by age 28 Talbot continued to show up at Sunday Mass and mumble a daily Hail Mary, but he had neither taken Communion nor been to confession for three years.

With all his unmarried siblings, he lived at home. He never had a girlfriend and, like his older brother, told his mother “Tou are the only wife I want.” Still the champion hod carrier rarely had a coin to pass that hard-pressed woman for his keep. With husband and several sons employed, Elizabeth Talbot still had to do outside domestic labor at times. Once when Matt gave her a pittance for his board, she looked at the coin and cried “God forgive you, Matt!”

NO MORE DRINK

He felt guilty, no doubt, but drink came before all. Occasionally he even sold the work boots right off his feet to keep drinking. Then came a day of great luck. He backed a horse one weekend and it won enough that the day laborer did no work all week — just drank. His winnings ran out just as payday arrived for his mates at the brickyard. Knowing that he had often stood rounds for them, he stationed himself with one of his brothers between the brickyard and the nearby pub. His companions passed, some with a quick greeting and some with ruses to avoid seeing him. Then they dived into the pub, not one having invited him for a drink.

Something died in Talbot.

He stomped home.

“You’re early. And sober!” his mother exclaimed.

“Yes, I’m going to take the pledge.”

Not put off, Talbot rushed out, found a priest and pledged sobriety for three months. He dared no more, he said later.

Talbot’s whole life beyond backbreaking labor had revolved around the fellowship of the pub. Drink and its comradeship had been his sacraments, his joy, his comfort, his very reason for living. To give all this up, he had no AA, no aversion therapy, no clinic, no psychological counseling. And he faced the same grinding, poorly paid work and miserable living conditions, the same dank climate and drinking companions, and the same family heritage of alcoholism.

To this horrendous challenge, Talbot instinctively turned to the spiritual genius of those early Irish monks who “subdued the body’s urges” by “chastising the flesh” through the most arduous penances and rigorous modes of life.

No day passed that Talbot did not attend 5 a.m. Mass before work. After work he passed the evening in some church far from his local pub until time for bed. When a 6 a.m. Mass replaced the 5 a.m., since bricklaying began at 6 a.m., he found a lumberyard job that opened at 8 a.m., laboring there the rest of his life. He went frequently to confession, took spiritual direction, became a third-order Franciscan and joined every local confraternity, thereby linking himself to most of the other major religious orders while assuring that those he associated with outside of work were engaged in something either in or for the Church.

After a disastrous evening when — overcome with lust for a drink — Talbot rushed into a pub and was saved only because, mysteriously, no server seemed to see him, he imposed upon himself the hardship of never carrying cash. To avoid being tempted by his brothers, he moved out until they died or married.

After the deaths of his father and eldest brother, Talbot returned home and continued to share a tenement room with his mother. His sister, who cooked for him when he lived alone, and the woman who heated his noon meal where he worked, both report dietary habits worthy of some desert father: At home he ate on his knees and lived primarily on dry bread with meat a couple times a week, except during Lent, June (in honor of the Sacred Heart), Advent, or any big feast when he abstained totally. And he often fasted completely. Lunch for decades — while doing hard manual labor all day — was a revolting mixture of cocoa and tea steeped in boiling water but drunk cold as one more penance. As has been reported of saints time and again, on this totally inadequate diet he remained healthy and a notable worker.

WOODEN PILLOW

As sobriety became long-term, instead of easing up a bit, Talbot went deeper into the asceticism of Ireland’s early monks. For years he slept only about three hours a day — and that on a board plank with a wooden block for a pillow — clutching a statue of the Virgin to him so firmly that a relative claimed one side of his face became permanently without feeling. Tenement women up with sick children heard Talbot singing hymns in the middle of the night when he rose at 2 a.m. to pray.

His mother confided to her daughters that she often awoke in the night to see Talbot praying with his arms extended penitentially in the form of a cross. Occasionally he went back to bed briefly before heading for the church where, whatever the weather, he knelt on the stones outside until the sacristan unlocked the doors for the earliest Mass. He prayed during his lunch break and, whenever work paused, while others chatted, he prayed hidden behind the lumber piles. After work, he rushed to the nearest church to pray some more. Sundays he attended Mass after Mass and was proud that on a couple feasts of the Virgin, by dint of being in churches where several were being said at various altars, he could claim to have honored her by hearing twenty-one Masses.

Any addiction is by nature terribly self-centered. At first Matt Talbot can be said to have simply changed his addiction from drink to asceticism. Not a style that even most saints find appealing, the pitiless attack on the body of certain desert fathers and other ascetics nonetheless sometimes proves a successful route into the heart of God. There is ample proof that it succeeded in Talbot’s case.

From struggling against the craving for alcohol and his focus on acts of repentance (in his era, the drinker was seen by most as a willful sinner rather than one worthy of compassion), he moved on to identification with the universal mission of the Church. The same ardor that had put him out front carrying hod and made him single-minded in pursuit of drink now focused on a new thirst — for souls and for God.

“Matt cares nothing for money,” his fellow workers said. And in fact, all Talbot’s money, beyond the rent of the tenement room and the barest of necessities, either became quiet charity to other workmen struggling to support families or went off to works of the Church, particularly the missions.

BLUSTERING SANCTITY

To know God and his Church better, this barely literate man added to a prayer life worthy of those early Irish monks, exhaustive reading from theology, papal encyclicals, the lives of the saints, and the Church’s teaching on such social issues as the rights of workers to a just wage. The lists of the books he read — buying them or borrowing from a fellow devout soul among Dublin’s educated class — show a Catholic of the widest interests and knowledge.

But did he understand papal encyclicals and books on theology? Talbot told a fellow workman, who chided that men like them could not understand the sort of book Talbot held, that, before reading anything, he begged the help of the Holy Spirit to grasp the material — and he felt that he did. His well-educated book lender, who enjoyed talking over their mutual reading, confirmed Talbot was not lying. Gradually he was sought out by other workmen as a spokesman for the Church.

When Talbot suddenly dropped dead on the street, it was the heavy, sharp penitential chains wound round his limbs and body — chains he had removed whenever seen by a doctor — that resonated with Irish spirituality to arouse public interest. Although his spiritual director had preceded him in death, taking many details of Talbot’s soul with him, a biography came out almost at once based on interviews with others who knew Talbot. While it contained a few blatant untruths (his sisters “protected” the family by declaring Talbot’s father never drank, for instance), it still raised a swell of regard for Talbot that has never ebbed.

There is no holy personality mold. About the time he stopped drinking, Talbot’s best biographer, Mary Purcell, pictures him with “the same rather irascible temperament, the same inherited tendency to shout and bluster like his father.” In relentless pursuit of God through prayer, study, sacraments, vigils, fasts and abstinence, almsgiving, and other deeds of charity — because these acts were driven by a genuine thirst for God — the accretions to Talbot’s personality from alcoholism and modeling on poor parental example gradually sloughed away.

The true self that emerged was still a hard worker determined to earn every penny of his pay (when he thought he hadn’t he tried to refuse it) and still a strong-minded individual “afraid of no one,” as he put it, “but God himself.” But in confrontations with a boss, Matt now was civil and apologized if he became a bit heated. Serious-minded, he was nevertheless seen as a friendly man not averse to a laugh. Even if they made fun of his pious ways, his coworkers liked him — as did the lumberyard watchman’s little girls whom he always remembered with a coin and a visit at Christmas.

Generous in the pub in his drinking years, Talbot had turned from drink at the lack of reciprocal generosity. Now purified of self-seeking, many of his donations and good deeds were done in secret.

But the final word on Matt Talbot should go to his saintly spiritual director. This priest — who loved to go to Talbot’s tenement room to pray with him — told various people about the simple workman whom he said was a saint. By citing Matt Talbot’s heroic virtue, the Church agrees.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Treece, Patricia. “Staggering to Heaven.” Crisis 14 no. 11 (December 1996).

Reprinted by permission of the Morley Institute, a non-profit educational organization.

THE AUTHOR

Patricia Treece is author of such books on saints as A Man for Others. Her column, Saints Alive, originates in the Los Angeles Archdiocese newspaper The Tidings.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0319.html

Matt Talbot - The Workers' Saint

Mary Gaffney tells the story of Matt Talbot, a Dubliner who struggled with a drink problem, then led a severe ascetical life, and became known after his death as the Workers' Saint.
 

As a child I used to go on holiday to an aunt who lived in Parnell Square, Dublin, and every morning would attend Mass in St. Saviour's Church, Dominick Street. To get to Dominick St, I would walk through Granby Lane, where I would stop to pray at the spot where Matt Talbot, the Workers' Saint, died. It was during those years that I developed a devotion to him that has lasted to this day.

Last week I returned to Granby Lane, and again stood praying at the spot where he died. A cross on railings denotes the spot where he fell, and across the street, on the walls of the Salvation Army Hostel, is a marble tablet bearing the inscription: 'Matt Talbot collapsed and died on Trinity Sunday, June 7,1925.' His cause of beatification and canonisation was introduced in Rome in May, 1947.

Matt Talbot was one of 12 children - eight sons and four daughters - of Charles and Elizabeth Talbot. He was born at 13 Aldboro Court on May 2, 1856, and was baptised in the Pro-Cathedral three days later. He attended St. Lawrence O'Toole's Christian Brothers School for brief periods and later O'Connell Schools at North Richmond Street, which he left at the age of 12.

Road to drunkenness

Matt then went to work as a messenger boy with the firm of Messrs Edward and John Burke, wine merchants, North Lotts, Dublin, which did an extensive bottling business for Guinness and Youngers. Before he was a year in the store, he returned home drunk one evening. His father gave him a beating, removed him from Burke’s, and got him a job as a messenger boy in the Port and Docks Board, where he was in charge of the bonded stores. Sadly, it was a case of ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’. In Burke’s the drink was stout; in the stores of the Port and Docks, it was whiskey. The men in the bonded stores gave young Matt whiskey to drink, and thus began his road to drunkenness.
At 17 he became a bricklayer's labourer with Pembertons, the building contractors. He was an excellent workman and a great timekeeper but after work he would go with companions to neighbouring public houses and shebeens to drink until closing time or until the money was spent.

Pawning and stealing

Sometimes on Saturdays, pay day, he would give his 18 shillings wages to the owner of a public house. It would be drunk by Tuesday, and when the money was gone, he would pawn his boots to buy drink, and walk home in his stockinged feet. On one occasion, when drinking with friends, a fiddler joined them. When the money was running short, Matt took the fiddle and pawned it. He then returned with the money and bought more drink. It wasn't until the party broke up that the fiddler realised that his means of livelihood was gone. Years later Matt searched the city for the fiddler and, not finding him, had Masses offered as restitution.
But, no matter how much drink he had the night before, he was always in time for work at 6 a.m.

Changed his life

When Matt was 28 years old, an incident occurred that changed his entire life. For a week he had stayed away from work, drinking heavily. Saturday found him sober, thirsty and penniless. But confident that his workmates, for whom he had often bought drink, would come to his assistance, he stood with his brother near O'Meara's pub on the North Strand to meet his colleagues coming from Pembertons. The men passed in twos and threes but none stopped to ask the brothers to have a drink. Matt said later that he was "cut to the heart" by this treatment and went home.
His mother, preparing the midday meal, looked up with surprise, and exclaimed, "Matt, you're home early and you're sober." After the meal, he turned to his mother and said, "I'm going to take the pledge." As he left the house she said, gently, "God give you strength to keep it." Matt went to Holy Cross Church and, according to his own account, went to confession and took the pledge from Rev. Dr. Keane. He kept that pledge until his death 41 years later.
From that time on he attended Mass daily at 5 a.m. in St Francis Xavier's church, Upper Gardiner Street, before going to work at 6a.m.. After his evening meal at home he walked to a church on the north side of the city, either St. Peter's, Phibsboro, or Berkeley Road, where he prayed until it was time to go to bed. This was to avoid the temptation of meeting his former drinking companions as the effort to quell the craving for drink was causing him immense suffering.
Every week evening, every Saturday afternoon, and every Sunday morning was spent in church. He gave up all company and confided only in his mother. When Fr. John Cullen, a Jesuit priest attached to Gardiner Street Church, founded the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association in 1898 Matt became one of its first members.

Prayer and mortification

Matt Talbot mortified himself rigorously. He slept on a plank bed with a piece of timber for a pillow. This left his face numb in later years. He slept in chains which he wore for 14 years before his death, round his leg and on his body.
He prayed each night from 2 to 4 a.m., then dressed and prayed again until it was time to leave for Mass in St. Francis Xavier's church. He would arrive at 5am, if not earlier, and would kneel in prayer at the church's iron railings, waiting for it to open. On entering he would kneel and kiss the ground, then make the Stations of the Cross.
In 1892 Matt took up employment as a bricklayer's labourer with the firm of T & C Martin, on the North Wall, where he remained until his death. He fasted constantly. His breakfast consisted of cocoa prepared the previous evening by his sister, which he often drank cold. With this he ate some dry bread. For his midday meal he had cocoa to which he would add a pinch of tea, and again drank cold. With this he took a slice of bread. His sister would bring him a small evening meal. If she brought fish he would insist that she take it home with her and would make do with bread soaked in the fish juice.
On Sundays he remained in the church for every Mass. Only on returning to his room at about 2 p.m. would he break his fast for the first time since 6.30 p.m. the previous day. The remainder of the day was spent in prayer, reading the Scriptures and the lives of the saints. He gave all his money to neighbours in need and to the missions.

Collapsed and died

Matt was on his way to Mass in St. Saviour's on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 1925, when he collapsed and died on Granby Lane. A paragraph in The Irish Independent of the following day stated, "An elderly man collapsed in Granby Lane yesterday and, on being taken to Jervis Street Hospital, was found to be dead. He was wearing a tweed suit, but there was nothing to indicate who he was."
He was buried the following Thursday, the feast of Corpus Christi, in Glasnevin Cemetery.
In 1952 Matt Talbot's remains were exhumed and transferred to a double coffin bearing the inscription, 'The Servant of God, Matthew Talbot.' The coffin was placed in a vault in the central circle of the cemetery to which pilgrims began to flock from all over the world.
In 1972 Matt Talbot's remains were removed to the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Sean McDermott Street. The tomb has a glass panel through which the coffin may be seen. .

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This article first appeared in Reality (July/August 1999), a Redemptorist Publication.

Source:  http://www.catholicireland.net/saintoftheday/matt-talbot-the-workers-saint/