The Venerable Matt Talbot Resource Center exists to compile writings about the life, times, conversion, and recovery from alcoholism of Matt Talbot (1856-1925) of Dublin, Ireland. Disclaimer: The placing of information on this site from external linked sources does not necessarily imply agreement with that information. This center is independent of any other center, group, organization, website, or Facebook page. Comments are welcome at: ven.matt.talbot.resource.center@gmail.com
At first glance one might think that this Dublin bridge
solely honors Venerable Matt Talbot. But as this article indicates, it honors
many in addition to Matt.
Stories of remarkable men in
different times, in Dublin and in far flung places, are commemorated in the name
Talbot Memorial Bridge. Matthew Talbot was one of Dublin’s poor. Born in 1856, he
was both a worker and a drunkard by the age of 12 - a fate that was all too
common among his family and fellow inner city Dubliners. That he pawned his
shabby shoes, short changed his long suffering mother, drifted between jobs and
conned friends and acquaintances - all for the sake of yet another drink - is
too unremarkable a story for Matt to have made it into the history books.
Nothing was expected of his life other than he would die as he had lived - drunk
and in abject poverty.
Yet within a year of his death in 1925 he became an
inspiration to millions across the world. For Matt took the pledge - a promise
to abstain from alcohol - in 1884 and turned to God. He overcame tortuous
temptation with prayer, attending Mass each morning at 5am. He died on the
street, the depth of his devotion becoming obvious when the heavy chains and
knotted ropes, embedded into his flesh, were removed by mortuary
workers.
He had lived as an anonymous ascetic but in death became
venerated for his saintly life. Though Matt had kept his feet on terra firma,
for many young lads of the north and south docklands a life at sea beckoned -
from the days of being press ganged to fight in the service of the British, to
joining the merchant navy to sail the seven seas, or working on the ferries
criss-crossing the Irish Sea. Thousands said ‘good-bye’ never to return again,
meeting their fate in some distant land or finding their final resting place
beneath waves which would never wash an Irish shore.
During the Second World War, in particular, Irish seamen
knowingly risked their lives to bring essential supplies home to Ireland, a
neutral country. From a small fleet, 16 ships were lost to unprovoked attacks -
by aircraft, mines and torpedoes - and 136 men died. The Talbot Memorial Bridge
is a monument to these ordinary and, at once, extraordinary Dubliners and
Irishmen.
While their lives only overlapped
by seven months, the temperance movement message of Fr. Mathew, especially in
Ireland and the USA, influenced Matt Talbot and hundreds of thousands to take
the pledge to abstain from
alcohol.
“THEOBALD MATHEW: Temperance ‘Precursor’
to Fr Cullen”
A ‘Who’s Who’ of Ireland’s great benefactors will rarely
nowadays include a biography of Fr Theobald Mathew. His enormous achievements
and legacy will be skipped over, as if to minimise the enduring impact of his
endeavours to help the Irish extricate themselves from the heartbreak and sorrow
of addiction to alcohol.
Today the message of Fr Mathew is sorely needed, as Irish
young people as a group, like their peers in so many other countries, seem deaf
to all the warnings from their elders. They seem to have little idea of how
easily alcohol addiction is acquired. Fr Theobald, now dead for over 150 years,
would have his hands full in the Ireland of today. Were he a time-traveller, all
his charismatic skills would be required to persuade the youth of Ireland that
drinking alcohol is not a harmless activity.
The debate over alcohol addiction is never far from the
Irish conversation. It is omni-present, and ubiquitous. Yet, it was Fr Mathew
who put this issue in the forefront of the national debate, and made it
impossible to ignore. The abuse of alcohol and the casualness of the Irish
people towards it was always on his mind and, aiding the Irish as a nation, in
effect, educating and advising them, became his life’s work.
Few would have predicted that the shy teenager,
self-effacing and uncertain in the family home in County Tipperary would one day
become the most charismatic preacher of his era. Fr Mathew didn’t have a magic
formula, or even a guarantee of success. From pastoral experience, he knew that
our pre-Famine population of eight million was far too inclined to indulge. The
imperialism of Britain was often cited as an excuse. However, even after the
dreadful trauma of the Famine, the love of the Irish for drink did not go away.
If anything, it increased, although our population had been reduced by over
three million. For Fr Mathew, it would be an uphill road.
The self-imposed task he underwent to reform Irish drinking
habits would exhaust him but he kept battling on until his death on 8 December
1856. The boy who would one day become the Venerable Matt
Talbot and one of the glories of the ‘pledge’, a concept promoted
vigorously and successfully by Fr Mathew, was born in the May of that same
year.
Fr Theobald was one of twelve children, nine boys and three
girls. He was born on 10 October, 1790. ‘Toby’ was the nick-name by which his
family knew him, and ‘Darlin’ Master Toby’ by the poor of the locality who
considered him ‘a born saint’. He was educated in Thurles and Kilkenny,
excelling at Greek, Latin and English history. After applying and being accepted
for Maynooth, ‘Toby’s stay there was cut short because the authorities in the
college took umbrage at his organising a social event. Toby went home, dejected
and embarrassed and, for some time, had little to do by way of ecclesiastical
engagements, until it struck him to join the Capuchin Order, where he was
quickly accepted as a novice.
He was one of the generation of young Irish people to make
their way to seminaries and novitiates once again, as the rigors of the Penal
Laws began to ease early in the nineteenth century. In both Kilkenny and Dublin,
Fr Theobald was singled out by the congregation as being a rare and kind
confessor. It would be in Cork, though, that ‘Toby’s’ great life’s work had its
origins: ending the scourge of alcohol abuse. Thus, the yearning congregations
of Cork would readily adopt the ardent young man from Co Tipperary. In addition,
‘Toby’ became renowned for his generosity to the poor. He would never allow a
poor person to go away empty-handed. ‘Give, give’, he used to say, ‘what you
have, you got from God.’
Theobald was elected Provincial of the Capuchin Order in
1822, on the death of the then Provincial, and held that office for almost
thirty years, eventually retiring due only to ill health. Contrary to public
opinion, Fr Mathew did not invent the concept of total abstinence. It began in
America the previous century, and had much success with Protestant communities,
who embraced the whole notion of abstaining from alcohol, in cases where
moderation failed. The Quaker community also recommended abstinence, and it was
one of their own, a Quaker called Martin who set the ball rolling in Cork, very
close to where Fr Mathew lived with his community. At this juncture, Fr Mathew
began to consider the possibility of promoting total abstinence from alcohol
among his beleaguered people. The whole jigsaw of finding and ending the curse
of alcohol addiction came together in his mind, and he suddenly saw a way
forward.
On 10 April 1838, Fr Mathew uttered his famous phrase ‘Here
goes in the name of God’, and launched, in Cork, with Quaker Martin, what became
a great temperance campaign, introducing large numbers of his fellow-Irish to
the notion of total abstinence from alcohol. Large crowds came to hear Fr Mathew
preach. He was invited all over Ireland as well as to Britain and the United
States to spread his message. Hundreds of thousands of people of all religious
persuasions took the pledge on hearing him speak. The statue of him in Dublin’s
O’Connell Street shows him as he was - enthusiastic, exhorting, encouraging
others, as he reached to the skies.
Fr Mathew’s success as a temperance leader is indisputable.
His legacy waned when, after his death, many of those ‘pledge-takers’ reverted
back to alcohol-abuse. Nevertheless, many families and communities reaped a
plethora of rewards for as long as they remained abstainers. Fr James Cullen,
Pioneer founder, was inspired by the work of Fr Mathew and had the ambition to
take up where his great predecessor had left off. In a sense, Fr Mathew was the
forerunner of the Pioneer movement. Perhaps in the Ireland of today, those of us
blessed enough to be Pioneers, can offer up our gift of abstinence for the
people we know or hear of, who can’t abstain at all. Perhaps we, who don’t drink
alcohol, can ‘launch into the deep’ with a prayer that life may be made bearable
for those whose drinking is a source of suffering for both themselves and
others.
Matt Talbot’s purpose in
life until his 28th year of life was basically to work and drink. Then one
Saturday when his mates refused to buy him drinks, he experienced his personal
“bottom,” took the pledge not to drink, and returned fully to the Catholic
Church, remaining sober until his death 41 years later.
"All of us have a purpose in life. God
put us here because of his great plan for us. He has also equipped us with the
right grace, strength, intelligence, etc. for us to fulfill this purpose or
mission he has planned for us. But we have a choice whether to accept this
mission or not.
When we do accept the mission, we can go
through it properly doing the best that we can do for the greater glory of God
or we can do it half-heartedly out of laziness or maybe not do it at all for
fear of the unknown future. Again the choice is ours. The more blessings we
receive, the more we are called to be of service to others and share these
blessings. It is good to remember though that whatever choices we make there are
consequences. This is the task we have at hand… the choice is ours.
As an author, speaker, and founder
of Matt Talbot Kitchen & Outreach in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mary Costello has
introduced people to Venerable Matt Talbot for decades. She will be speaking on
the following topic November 20, 2014 at 7 pm at MTKO.
"Some of you who receive the Catholic paper, The Southern
Nebraska Register might have already read about the miracle performed by
God through the intercession of Matt Talbot. But the wonderful news to those of
us here in Lincoln is that the family involved in the miracle heard about the
man they prayed to because of the Kitchen and Outreach center here in Lincoln,
Nebraska!
Many of us who are concerned with alcoholism and addictions
have been praying, working and hoping for a verifiable, physical miracle to be
performed through the intercession of Matt Talbot for 75 years. But while Matt
continues to help thousands of men and women, wives and husbands, sons and
daughters, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas return to lives of sobriety and
serenity, these are considered psychological miracles and cannot be considered
by the Congregation of Rites, the folks who decide these things in Rome. They
need physical miracles to move a candidate from the status of “Venerable” where
Matt stands today, to “Blessed” and then, Praise God one day, to the level of
“Saint.”
Yes, there has been a miracle in the suburb of Overland
Park, Kans. A young couple, Shannon and Patrick Watkins, traveled to Lincoln for
the baptism of a relative’s baby and heard about our work and decided to name
their baby Talbot. I’ll explain more about the miracle when I come to see you
all in November.
I know many people, even people associated with MTKO really
don’t know much about the man, Matt Talbot. No, he wasn’t a relative of mine,
nor a friend! Let me tell you a little about this marvelous man and, hopefully,
soon-to-be-saint: he was born into a very poor, alcoholic family in Dublin,
Ireland in 1856. He had very little education and admits himself he was probably
an alcoholic by his early teens. He went to work when he was only 12, which was
the custom and because of another interesting Irish custom (the biggest employer
being one of the world’s largest brewers) the paychecks were not sent home with
the workers but were deposited with the local pub owners. Sounds incredible, but
true. (It was the Catholic Church that finally led efforts to change this
custom, but not until the 1920’s!)
Therefore, every worker had to pass through the neighborhood
watering hole before he arrived home on payday. We can only surmise how many
ever made it home with a few shillings still jangling in his pockets. This was
at a time when Ireland was still recovering from the Great Famine of the late
1840’s and 1850’s; thousands of people were unemployed, starving farmers were
streaming in from the west and soldiers were coming home from the Crimean War.
Dublin was a sea of destitution and poverty.
Matt Talbot and his brothers were some of the unfortunates
who usually happily received their paychecks on Saturday noon and had drained it
by Tuesday night. The rest of the week they drank “on the cuff” or on the
charity of their friends. But one week when Matt was 28, he had been sick all
week. He didn’t draw a paycheck at all. One Saturday noon he stood outside his
favorite pub waiting for one of his pals to invite him in for a nip or two. No
one did. Matt walked a few steps to the bridge overlooking the Royal Canal. He
had never been a particularly spiritual person. His religious education had
taken him only to his First Communion and Confirmation and while he attended
Mass most Sundays he did not receive the Sacraments. There was in Ireland at the
time a practice called “Taking the Pledge” designed by a Catholic priest, Fr.
Mathew, to stem the tide of the horrendous problem of alcoholism in Ireland in
the mid-Nineteenth Century.
We don’t know what God whispered to Matt that afternoon in
1874, but it must have been something wonderful. Matt walked home and said to
this mother, “I’m going to take the Pledge,” and she said, “Don’ take it unless
you’re going to keep it.” He said, “I am going to keep it.”
But the way that he kept it was the great thing, the thing
that turned him into a saint. From home that first day, Matt walked to Conliffe
College, a seminary in Dublin, where he went to Confession and took the Pledge.
The next morning, he went to Mass and Communion for the first time in many
years. During the week, he got up early and went to daily Mass, praying that the
Lord would help him stay sober. After work, instead of going to the bar, he
visited the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. He asked the priests at the College
to teach him to read (he could barely read and write his name) so he could read
the lives of the saints and he ended up reading and understanding deep
theology.
Matt Talbot especially loved Our Lady under the title of Our
Lady of Wisdom and he slept with a statue of her in his arms. For the next 40+
years, he ate only enough to keep himself alive and gave away most of his
earnings (the Columban Fathers were one of his favorite charities); he lived
simply, sleeping on planks for only a few hours a night and spending many hours
a day in prayer or spiritual reading. He died on his way to his third Mass of
the day on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 1925. After years of study, he was declared
“Venerable” by Pope Paul VI in 1975 indicating that this man had lived a life of
heroic virtue.
Since his death, Matt has performed many, many miracles,
well, of course God performs the miracles but we pray to Matt and he intercedes
at God’s throne for us. But this is the first physical, verifiable miracle that
has been performed through Matt’s intercession. When I come to talk to the
group, I will tell you more about Matt, and more about the miracle. If you would like more information about Matt Talbot, please
contact me at marykcostello@yahoo.com or at 3901 S,
27th St, unit 4, Lincoln Ne. 68502. I have prayer cards and medals
available."
O Jesus, true friend of the humble worker, Thou hast given us
in Thy servant, Matthew, a wonderful example of victory over vice, a model of
penance and of love for Thy Holy Eucharist, grant, we beseech Thee, that we, Thy
servants, may overcome all our wicked passions and sanctify our lives with
penance and love like his.
And if it be in accordance with Thy adorable designs that Thy
pious servant should be glorified by the Church, deign to manifest by Thy
heavenly favours the power he enjoys in Thy sight, who livest and reignest for
ever and ever. Amen.
