[The following reflection appeared on the 9th June 2013 Facebook
page of St. Canice’s Church, Finglas, Dublin, Ireland at https://www.facebook.com/stcaniceschurch/posts/498207693581443.
More about this church can be found at
VENERABLE MATT TALBOT
Matt Talbot was born on the 2nd May 1856 at 13, Aldborough Court in the Parish of St. Agatha. Matt was one of Dublin's poor, he lived in a tenement, wore second hand cloths, died in a laneway, and was buried in a pauper's grave.
Coming from such a deprived background and
with an alcoholic father and a family history of neglect
and poverty, Matt found himself sucked into the
culture of addiction and the only choice of drug available to the poor of his day, alcohol. Matt like so many others embraced alcohol as a means of escape
from the misery and poverty of daily life.
Today we live in an age of addictions more
sophisticated perhaps than those of Matt's day, addictions to substances such as alcohol and other
drugs soft or hard, prescription or illegal, addictions to
gambling, pornography and the internet, addictions
to work, professional advancement, sex, money and power. All these have the
ability to destroy our lives and like demons even our very souls as well.
Matt Talbot gradually came to this awareness and
from the time of his conversion as a young man of 28, he spent the rest of
his life living to a heroic extent the Christian virtues through prayer,
spiritual reading, work and acts of charity.
Matt sets before us a radical example which
demonstrates that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. His life is a witness to the fact that people can
by God's grace and their own self acceptance say no to that which leads to
addiction or addictive behaviour.
His story is of triumph over addiction. It is a story of faith and of how the power of God's grace can help us overcome the struggles and difficulties of life.