Pope Francis Prays in St. Maximilian Kolbe's Cell at Auschwitz

Pope Francis is currently in Krakow, Poland, the city of St. John Paul II, for World Youth Day 2016.

Earlier today, he visited the the Nazi concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau and walked into Auschwitz's Block 11, where St. Maximilian Kolbe spent his last days before being put to death by lethal injection in the starvation cell on the ground floor. Fr. Kolbe was a Franciscan friar who volunteered to die instead of another man when he heard him desperately cry that he was leaving a wife and children behind.

As seen in the photo Pope Francis sat in silent prayer and reflection in the cell http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/07/29/pope_francis_visits_auschwitz-birkenau_museum_and_memorial/1247696

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of drug addicts.
                                          


               

                          

One Church’s Post About Venerable Matt Talbot

The following was posted on FACEBOOK (06/07/16) from Saint Thomas More Catholic Church, Lynchburg, Virginia.

 

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1026199314114817&id=448917858509635

 

 

Venerable Matt Talbot of Dublin (1856-1925) was, sadly, the stereotype of the Irish Drunk. An unskilled labourer from a poor family, he would beg and borrow his way to the next drink. But perhaps not so sad in the end. 

 

Some years before Bill W was inspired to formulate the 12 steps of AA with Dr Bob, a man in Ireland, notoriously addicted to alcohol, began to live them. In a most grace-filled way, Matt Talbot the drunk became Matt Talbot the servant of drunks. He acknowledge his disease, recognized in God his only hope for recovery, set about making amends to those he had offended and hurt, and worked tirelessly to bring his drinking buddies to sobriety.

 

A faithful Catholic, he died on his way to church.  He is a shining example of the meaning of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (to Whom the month of June is dedicated) burning in love for all...even, well maybe especially, drunks, addicts, all those not living one day at a time in His care....

 

Years later Bill W would write, "we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, we made a conscious decision to turn ourselves over to the care of God, as we understood Him...." Matt Talbot knew he couldn't do it, God could, and he let Him.

 

Now on the path to canonization, he is God's shout out today to all those still in some substance's grip...be held by God instead!

 

Happy feast day Matthew! Sainthood Soon! All your fellow drunks, in and out of recovery...ask your prayers!

MATT TALBOT, THE COMMON MAN

In 1945 Rev. Thomas J. McCarthy, Ph.D. delivered five addresses for the nationwide Catholic Hour radio program in a series titled, SAINTS FOR THE TIMES, which were then published under the two titles:
Saints for the Times: five addresses delivered in the nationwide Catholic Hour, produced by the National Council of Catholic Men, in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company, from October 28, 1945 through November 25, 1945. Our Sunday Visitor Press (1946) 

John Henry Newman, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, Matt Talbot: Five Catholic hour addresses delivered by the Reverend Thomas J. McCarthy, Ph.D.  Newman Bookshop (1945)

While the three saints in this book have been deceased for centuries,  John Henry Newman (now Blessed) had died 55 years before these presentations and Matt Talbot had been deceased for only two decades and would not be declared “Venerable” for another three decades.

While we are only posting this very meaningful chapter on Matt Talbot, the entire book can be read online at https://archive.org/details/saintsfortimesfi00m.

2019 Update: This link is no longer operational but the second title will appear by posting the book title on Google for a list of universities in USA and UK that have it.

 Twenty years ago Matt Talbot was picked up dead on a Dublin Street. A simple laborer, his passing rated only the summary obituary notice that simple laborers receive — a few lines of agate type tucked away in the daily newspaper: "Matthew Francis Talbot; age, 69; died June 7th; funeral Mass, Jesuit Church, Gardiner Street; burial, Glasnevin Cemetery." That was all the press had to say of Matt Talbot at his death, and that was 20 years ago.

Today we know much more of Matt Talbot than most of the people who read that obituary notice, because today, six full-length books have appeared, not to mention hundreds of essays, articles, and pamphlets, having as their subject this lovable, thoroughly appealing, and warmly human person. The affectionate reference to him as “Matt’' rather than the more formal “Matthew" is at once the key to his hold upon the hearts of so many people. It is as though he lived just down the street from us and we had known him personally for many years.

Thousands of men and women all over the English-speaking world are praying, only 20 years after his death, that Matt Talbot will be canonized by the Catholic Church, that his name one day will be honored at the altar even as the names of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas More are now honored. When we speak of him today, we do in no way wish to anticipate the judgment of the Catholic Church upon his life of prayer and good works. We simply wish to hold out for consideration his life of great sanctity, hard work, and extraordinary discipline, and to indicate its significance. For Matt Talbot's story is bound to inspire, and the more it gets around, the more good it will do. He has significance, today, for two reasons. First, an America that is discouraged and disheartened at its failure to control its habit of drink can learn much from his solution; and secondly, Matt Talbot is desperately needed as a symbol by workingmen not only in America but throughout the whole world.

He was born in Dublin half way through the last century — in 1856. He was one of 12 children, of a good father and a great mother. Poverty knew his family very well. At an early age, at the age of 12 to be exact, Matt left school and went to work as a messenger boy for a wine merchant. He developed in that job a taste for wine which led to the habit of drink. And before he was 14 he was spending his weekly pay, such as it was, in the saloons instead of bringing it home to his mother. At 14 years of age, a drunkard ! Imagine, at an age when a boy should have been worrying about his athletic prowess or his skill at games, this boy was caught fast in drink, and for almost 15 years he was to remain under the tyranny of this habit. So strong was its hold over him that on one occasion he gave the very shoes off his feet in payment for a drink.

One night, though, at the age of 26, he came home to his mother and told her he was going to give up drinking. Like any mother, her heart quickened at this news; and yet she had been subjected to so many disappointments in the past that she must have wondered whether he could persevere. She sent him off to the priest, nonetheless, with the blessing of God upon him. After seeing the priest. Matt promised to abstain from intoxicating liquor for three months. That promise was not easy to keep. His whole system, so long accustomed to the stimulation of liquor, was now shocked by the lack of it. Worse still, there was a loneliness enforced upon him. — he could no longer go to the drinking places he had once frequented, he could no longer spend his evenings in the company of those with whom he had traveled for 14 years. To keep his pledge, he had to endure the bleakness of his hall bedroom during the evening hours when his day’s work was done. So desperately did he feel this sense of isolation that he grew testy, even with his mother, and threatened to go back to his drink. But she, wonderful  psychologist, sensing that no man can live in a vacuum, understanding that no man can turn from a life of sin or dissipation and have any success living virtuously unless he embrace some positive program of activity, encouraged her boy to fill up that void which the loss of drink had made in his life by taking Jesus Christ as his companion each morning in Holy Communion.

This he began to do, but his progress was discouragingly slow. The fierce temptation to drink persisted — at times agonizing in its intensity — and Matt must have wondered whether he could persevere. He must have wondered whether Christ could ever become so attractive as to counteract a habit made strong by 14 years of exercise. He stayed with his resolution, however, and for his constancy Christ rewarded him. Three months went by and he took no liquor — then a year passed. And now strength and confidence surged in his heart. He pledged himself not to touch any liquor, ever, for the remainder of his life. And he kept that pledge. And because he kept that pledge we say he is significant for America.

There is little use closing our eyes to the paralyzing effect which drink has in this country. Not drink within the limits of reason, but that habit of drink, unreasonable and excessive, which has resulted in the breaking of homes, in scalding many a mother’s, many a wife’s heart, in crushing the promise of so many business and professional careers — that habit which has become, on the testimony of expert medical men, one of America’s outstanding problems.

Now the problem of drink is mainly psychological. It involves the will. All the medical care and institutional cures in the world cannot save a man from drink if he does not sincerely will to give it up. The change has to come from within. It was so in Matt Talbot’s life. It must be so in the life of anyone thus afflicted. See what that change from within did for Matt Talbot. He still went through the simple routine of his daily round but now there was a difference. His long day at work, formally humdrum and unattractive, in itself a strong temptation to drink, was now made wonderfully attractive by the life of prayer accompanying it.

When we say a long day, think of the schedule he followed. Up at two o’clock in the morning after only three or four hours sleep on a plank bed with wooden pillow. Never mind if you can’t understand such discipline, such mortification! Never mind if you do not see the need of it! It was Matt’s way and it was a good way. He would pray for two hours in the early morning, get dressed and go off to 5:30 Mass. There he would receive Holy Communion and return to his room for a sparse breakfast. Then off to work in the lumber yards at 7:30. This was his daily routine for 41 years.

He was never late and he was not lazy — and his work was good because it was also his prayer. Thus, there was no break in his prayer from the time he rose in the morning until he slept at night. At 5:30 when his work was through at the yards, he would return home for an indifferent meal — food and drink now exerted no tyranny over him. He was above their reach, and small wonder, for his thoughts constantly were on Christ, His Blessed Mother, and the Saints. The evening hours, once so lonely and full of temptation to be out drinking, now were short enough and never lonely for Matt because of his prayer and spiritual reading.

We have said that his work was also his prayer and that is me truth. In America we have lost that notion of work as prayer, and we are the poorer for having lost it. We have forgotten that work, all work, has a dignity — and that men must see in their daily tasks, no matter how menial, how governed by routine, wonderful opportunities for improving their spiritual resources. If the American workingman will take Matt Talbot as his model, he can enrich his life immeasurably. This is not to say that he must be meek to the point of tolerating injustice and taking no steps to remedy it. Matt Talbot, for all his subdued way, went out on strike from the lumber yards when the strike was called. He did not, however, take part in recriminations and in expressions of hatred, for in the good common sense which he possessed so abundantly, he knew that nothing would be accomplished that way save the deepening of the rift between the worker and his employer.

One other thing! There is a lot of silly sentiment expressed about the common man today. The press and radio have proclaimed that the century of the common man is here. He has been rhapsodized and made a great deal of and yet very little has come of it all. For to most of us in America, the common man still has no face. We know that we are passing him every day on our streets and yet we cannot point him out. He is for all intents and purposes an abstraction, the subject of articles and talks but never a living person whom we can recognize.

If the 20th century wants an image of the common man, let it look to Matt Talbot. Was ever a man so common — broken shoes, torn trousers, odd coat, five dollars a week for wages, ill-regulated diet, cold, damp hall-bedroom, long hours at work. Why these are all the things that plague and have plagued the laboring man in our society. These are the things the laboring man has been longing to correct, and they find their complete expression in Matt. Yet for all his handicaps. Matt Talbot was patient of his lot and he achieved happiness at his work. He knew a society could have a 40 hour week, a minimum wage law, protection for the aged, good living conditions, and still be miserable and unhappy if it did not have God. He knew that many men would use their new found leisure and increased wages only to lose God and to sin more grievously than ever they had sinned in the past. He knew the weakness of the common man because he knew his own weakness. He realized that commonness is very often mediocrity and that a man cannot save his soul if he is mediocre. He saw that life could only be successful for the common man if he would be uncommonly good, uncommonly faithful in prayer, uncommonly reliant upon God. 

If Matt Talbot ever becomes canonized, it will be not only Matt, but millions of other men who in all countries of the world have chosen to follow Christ without any fanfare or publicity day in and day out at their daily tasks, providing faithfully for their families, seeking no awards or medals, caring not if the world ever sees or hears them, hoping only to merit Christ’s clasp of their hand as they go through life. If Matt Talbot is raised to the altar, the common man will be given a greater recognition in that single gesture than ever he has received since Christ walked along the roads of Judea and chose His first followers from among the ranks of those simple, nameless folk who have never since forgotten the honor He bestowed upon them; who as a consequence have treasured their anonymity, their obscurity, in the hope that He will always feel free to walk in their midst, in the hope that He will always feel free to turn to them at any time for help in accomplishing His work upon this earth.

When Christ touched the heart of Matt Talbot, He indicated once more His identity with the poor and with those whom the world has so grievously sinned against. And having touched the heart of this common man and having given it such wonderful strength, millions of hearts everywhere have begun to beat faster in the knowledge that Christ still does not forget, that He still walks among the little people of the world and in their midst He is most at home and from their midst He receives His greatest homage.

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Sharing Venerable Matt Talbot Pamphlets and Prayer Cards

Grzegorz Jakielski noted on his English Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Talbot/304690079653019) that he went for the first time to the Sanctuary of the just canonised St. Stanislaus Papczynski (1631-1701) in Gora Kalwaria, Poland.

Wherever he visits, Grzegorz leaves Venerable Matt Talbot pamphlets and prayer cards for his beatification as shown in this photograph. Can we not do the same?

Matt Talbot: the Chains of Gargle

 

by Rob Buchanan

5th Dec 2014

http://theloosecannonbuchanan.tumblr.com/post/104425453716/matt-talbot-the-chains-of-gargle

 

 

It is the summer of 1925. A crowd surrounds the body man lying motionless on the cobbles of Granby Lane in the grim backstreets of Dublin. He had apparently been running to mass in a nearby church when he dropped dead. A guard arrives on the scene and pushes through the curious onlookers. He rolls the body over to see a gaunt old man’s face. No one present could identify him. As they moved his body to Jervis Street hospital they noted he felt far heavier he looked. When morticians unbuttons his large well-worn coat to look for some form of identification they were shocked at what they found. The frail torso was wrapped in heavy chains and metal cords. He was bound like Marley’s ghost from A Christmas Carol. The largest wound around his waist, others on his arms and legs. The body was later identified as that of Matt Talbot, an unknown Dubliner whose name would soon be on the lips of popes and politicians,and eventually street signs,statues and buildings all over the world.

Dublin in 1856 was a dark time. The day Matt was born a parade celebrating the end of the Crimean War was on in Dublin and it was the first small bit of celebration the city had seen. The Famine had ended and Dublin was bearing the scars both of mass emigration and also the influx of uprooted and desperately poor families from the country. Alcohol was one of the few affordable escapes from the bitter reality of day to day life. The general feeling was that life in Ireland for the working class was the bleakest it had ever been.  The city may have still been in the afterglow of Catholic emancipation but for most average people the new religious freedom meant very little. The industrial revolution never really took hold in Dublin and as a result it was mainly unskilled,casual labourers who swarmed the streets. Guinness and Jameson’s where king when it came to stable employment as well as having a cultural hold on the people via cheap drink and public intoxication. Booze was at the heart of the city and it was being shipped out from the docks and the canals almost as fast as the brewery’s and distilleries could produce it, or Dubliners could drink it. Trams and open top coaches ambled noisily across the city loaded to overflowing with Dubliners. The massive red light zone known as Monto, off O Connell Street (then Sackville Street) was booming with British soldiers and any local with a few shillings in his pocket. This was the hay day for the notorious district which would eventually be brought down by the Legion of Mary and the end of British occupation within a few decades. It was an unlikely breeding ground for religious aesthetic but it was in to this dreary lamp lit port city that Talbot was born to a large poor family of 13 children in Dublin’s North Strand.

When Talbot was still a young boy in 1867 the failed Irish Republican Brotherhood “Fenian” insurrection came to nothing ultimately, despite galvanizing thousands in the city to protest and perhaps consider future possibilities for freedom. But there is no indication that any of this nationalism took root in the Talbot household. They were desperately poor and like most of their class were living in hellishly overcrowded conditions.They were too concerned with their daily bread and their daily pint to look further afield. Alcoholism plagued the men of the family, and when Talbot left school at twelve (which was not uncommon then) his choice of work in a wine merchants proved disastrous. Within a year he was a full blown alcoholic, completely lost in drink. The child was delivering Guinness and getting drunk on the dregs of the returned bottles.The boy then went to work on the Docks near his home and again was drawn to booze by working in the whiskey stores.

 

The drinking culture in Dublin at the time was an endless cycle of poverty and hunger, long miserable working days resulting in wage packets being handed behind the bar. In late 19th century and early 20th century Dublin an appalling procedure of pay for manual labour existed which say workers be required to collect their packet in pubs on Saturday. If it was in cheque form it could only be cashed by the publican himself. Its easy to see how disastrous this was for the families of men waiting at home for food when the father had been all but coerced in to blowing the whole wages in the pub. Like many working class men it was not unusual to pawn the very shirt on his back to fulfill his addiction. He drank regularly in O'Meara’s on the North Strand with his father and brothers. Without a wife or children to provide any framework or motivation to break the cycle, he was still living at home and sinking deeper in to depression. He would literally beg borrow and steal and very quickly became the lowest of the low in a city which was no strangers to mass alcoholism, occasional unemployment and hopelessness. One anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, is that he stole the fiddle of a blind street entertainer to pawn for drink money. At the age of 28 something finally snapped.He had what many addicts call “a moment of clarity” on Newcomen Bridge and decided to take “the pledge.” 

Father Mathew was a famous campaigner in the anti-alcohol abstinence movement in Ireland. A familiar  statue of him stands on O'Connell Street. He popularised the idea of “The Pledge” which was a holy vow taken by lay people to completely stay away from alcohol. Despite of (or perhaps because of)the massive cultural pervasiveness of drunkenness in Irish society at the time, The Pledge became a social phenomenon in the 1840s and 50s. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country began to officially take the pledge. And the results on levels of crime and accidents where dramatic. Everything from robberies to murder rates fell and accidental deaths on roads and workplaces likewise. It was 1884 after the first peak of The Pledge that Matt Talbot decided to commit himself to a teetotal life. He went to Holy Cross College and made the solemn oath and surprisingly to everyone, perhaps himself the most, he stuck to it for the remaining 40 years of his life. To bolster his resolve he began what would today be seen as a fanatic level of commitment to prayer and church attendance. In a project which is still encouraged in the Alcoholics Anonymous movement today, he made a list of all his debtors, people he stole from or hurt and spent his life tracking them down and making amends for what he had done. He fasted and charity work among the homeless and hungry of the city as well as alcoholics like himself. He began to siphon all his earnings beyond his meager diet and rent to pay for food and clothing for an ever increasing circle of dependent families. One description of him from a fellow member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, a secular wing of the Franciscans which he joined “happy little man…who smiled at everything except a dirty joke”. It’s quite telling that this is one of the very few records that we get of the man’s demeanor beyond his austere diet and religious habits. Likewise we only have one confirmed blurred photograph of the man. Many of the interactions he had with others around this tumultuous time in Irish history are unclear. For example his level of involvement in the 1913 lockouts is unconfirmed. Whilst some sources claim he had only a passing though positive role others, mainly church orientated, have him resisting financial pressure and not breaking the strike. He was certainly a member of ITGWU. He became studious reading religious texts about the lives of the saints and Irish monastic traditions which may have informed his severe habits. In addition to his new addiction to Catholicism he continued doing hard labour to make a living. But even his choice of jobs and his new alarming enthusiasm for seeking out difficult and backbreaking  work seemed part of his religious epiphany.

 

Perhaps the single biggest influence on Talbot was Dr. Michael Hickey, who was Professor of Philosophy in Clonliffe College where he had first taken the pledge and turned his life around. It was Hickey who first gave Talbot a penitential chain to wear. This original chain was not like the industrial sized ones he would later adopt, it was more a thin symbolic chain like an item of jewellery which would remind him of his promise to abstain. Arguably Talbot’s biggest personal tragedy was the death of his beloved mother in 1915, who he had lived with all his life. He moved in to a tiny Spartan flat. Like monastic aesthetics he slept on a bare plank without a pillow and woke at 5am very day for hours of mass before work. As his fame grew many of the details of Talbots life have been embellished like some religious urban legend. One of the many disputed facts is the size and weight of the chains he carried daily and whether they were a form of self-mortification or simple a symbol of his “slavery to the virgin Mary.” Although its certain some of the details were exaggerated its highly unlikely that the wearing of a few normal devotional cords and medals would have created the frenzy of interest that those discovered on his body did. By the time of his funeral a few days later huge crowds gathered in Glasnevin cemetery. But this would not be his final resting place as almost 50 years later in 1972 his remains were moved to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Sean McDermott Street. A glass panel allows visitors to see his coffin. This move was the latest step in a process of veneration which had begun in the 1930s which resulted in the lowly alcoholic dock worker being granted the title Venerable Matt Talbot in 1975.

In the hierarchy of the Catholic Church “Venerable” is basically halfway to saint hood.The steps toward canonization are 1) Servant of God 2) Venerable 3) Blessed 4) Saint.To some it might seem as if Talbot did relatively little beyond small scale charity work and self denial to warrant such a title as Venerable. Its really down to the context and to the sponsorship of sympathetic bishops first declaring you a servant of God. Then a Papal proclamation is required to upgrade that to Venerable.This requires you to be declared as having had a life “heroic in virtue"  and certainly many of these virtues such as charity, fortitude and temperance were clearly displayed in Talbot’s later life.The fact that a mini cult of devotees which quickly spread among the Irish poor and across the water to the US must certainly have made the move seem apt to Rome. But was it really as simple as a man finding God and losing drink? I suppose Talbot is the only one who knows what was going on in his mind and soul.

A life of self-denial and guilt may have not been all that uncommon during the time period, but the addition of such extremes of self-punishment points to larger neurosis or person demons or even fetishes at play. That the man remained celibate his whole life in a city and community where pressures towards marriage and family were huge may perhaps give some insight in to the battles Talbot was fighting in his heart and mind. The idea of self-mortification and sin were two pillars of Catholicism. Psychologically they created a potent cycle of guilt due to inescapable human urges and contemporary realities, resulting in the necessity to purge or atone for these affronts against god. Not only did this keep many uneducated people in a constant state of fear and misery about their immortal souls but it secured the churches position and authority as the gatekeepers to heaven. An obedient and unquestioning mass of working class provided the backbone and a very narrow and austere interpretation of the bible, with the passion and poverty of Christ paramount, offered an example of piety. As did the lurid and grotesque representations of martyrdom by the cavalcade of saints in their wound bleeding, lion dismembered or stake burning forms. Was there any sadomasochistic element to this? It seems unlikely that he derived any erotic pleasure from it, as none of the other indicators of fetishism or masochism are apparent in his relationships with others. Talbot was no hermit nor was he initially a seeker of wisdom. An important thing to remember is that unlike many of his contemporaries , and he had divorced himself entirely from any recognition of his suffering or any fame.

Whatever the intentions of the high ranking clergy who saw a great potential in him as a rallying point for the working class and for the drunk or destitute, it’s clear that Talbot himself never sought any adoration and never communicated any particular need to be recognised. But his example and his legend spread far beyond the backstreets of Dublin. He became an icon for the temperance movement and gained a cult following among the Irish diaspora in the United States. Whether you view him as a pious pawn of the catholic church or an inspirational example of how faith and hard work can turn around a hopeless man , its undeniable that Matt Talbot is a unique individual in the history of Dublin city.

 

Note: Photographs are included in the link above.

Venerable Matt Talbot Trusted in God's Grace and Mercy

The following is an edited version of this homily. The original
version is available at http://cloynediocese.ie/bishop-crean-homily-annual-pioneer-ptaa-mass-2016/

Homily delivered by Bishop William Crean at the Annual Pioneer (Pioneer Total Abstinence Association) Mass, St Colman’s Catherdal Cobh
1st July 2016

My friends,

We are a mystery to ourselves. The journey of self-discovery is lifelong. Our origins by way of our parents, family and community are an enormous influence on our lives. We can seek to mask these influences from others if they are a source of shame for us but we cannot hide them from ourselves. If we do we can pay a very high price because they can “pop up” at any time in life to surprise, shock or jolt us.

Tonight we gather in faith to celebrate the Cloyne Diocese Pioneer Total Abstinence Association’s Annual Mass. It affords us the opportunity to reflect on and pray about the abuse of alcohol or clinical dependency/addiction in our society. Given the widespread nature of this abuse virtually every family is touched and damaged by the ravages wrought by these addictions. These experiences are not new for us. For more than a century and a half the Pioneer Movement has served so many individuals and families with a spiritual programme to combat alcohol abuse. I commend you to-night for that work of service which stretches patience and requires great perseverance.

Since the establishment of A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the 1930’s in the U.S. many thousands have found a path to sobriety. It is worth noting that the A.A. programme has a strong spiritual foundation whereby the alcoholic needs to acknowledge, as a first step, their powerlessness over alcohol. They do not call it a demon for nothing. For those who embrace the 12 step programme it has been of immense grace and blessing for them and their families as they acknowledge their need for a “Higher Power”. A further sign of its effectiveness is that the 12 step programme has been adapted by many other groups as a way out of other addictions.

The tragedy of our time is the myriad of ways in which young people are drawn into these addictions leaving them with huge battles to regain control and balance in their lives.

So while the era has changed and we live in changed and changing times the fundamental issue of addiction has not changed since the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association was established in the late 19th century.

In the meantime the P.T.A.A continues to fly the flag for abstinence which for some is the only solution to manage their alcohol addiction. Two insights from recent practice are worth keeping in mind. Firstly, the spiritual motivation that flows from knowing the continuous outpouring of love from the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the spiritual wellspring for personal conversion and fidelity. The other insight is the need for a support group to help find a new pattern of living free of addiction. This is where the local branch of the Pioneers can be of practical assistance on the journey of recovery.

So often in life we are surprised by providence when a prophetic figure emerges from the most unlikely place. In this case it is the Ven. Matt Talbot – a humble saintly man who by grace and his own self-sacrifice has become the symbol of the Cross of addiction and one’s victory over its deathly consequence as the living embodiment of the Paschal Mystery. Tonight we draw inspiration and hope from the wellspring of his cooperation with the graces given him to fight the demons that otherwise would have controlled his life.

Fear, anxiety and worry are very corrosive forces in life. To each Jesus offers a counter word of reassurance:

“Fear not, I have overcome the world.
The hairs on your head have been counted.
Can any of you, however much you worry add one single ambit to
your span of life.
I myself will pasture my sheep,
I myself will show them where to rest
I shall look for the lost one,
bring back the stray
bandage the wounded
and make the weak strong.” (Ezekiel 34:15)

Matt Talbot lived this trust in God’s grace and mercy. It is a model/example for all of us in living our life in Christ Jesus.

Tonight’s celebration of Mass is an expression of our on-going concern of the impact of chemical addiction in our families and in the wider community. The “craic” is glamorised as some harmless fun when in fact it is anything but. Overtime it can wreak havoc spiritually, psychologically and physically. So our prayer through the intercession of the Venerable Matt Talbot is heartfelt and urgent.

We pray tonight also that Matt Talbot will be raised to the ranks of the Blessed in the community of the Universal Church that his heroic sanctity and perseverance will serve as an inspiration to a new generation to use well the gifts the Creator God has given us.

Matt Talbot and the 'Dark Night of the Soul'

At the end of his 1981 article, “A literary map of Dublin,”  (http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/21st-march-1981/19/a-literary-map-of-dublin) Terence Sheehy writes:

“If you are passing the Jesuit church of St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, spare a prayer for the cause for the cannonisation of Matt Talbot, the Dublin worker-mystic. Almost daily he knelt on the entrance steps of this church, in the darkness of the morning, with the Devil on his back, waiting for the doors to open, and for the first Mass to begin. This almost illiterate ex-alcoholic knew more about the dark night of the soul and the cloud of unknowing than many a would-be desert father of today.”

For those essentially unfamiliar with the phrase “dark night of the soul,” perhaps the following article will provide a worthwhile introduction:

Understanding the ‘dark night of the soul’

by Emily Stimpson 

OSV Newsweekly 

5/20/2015

https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/InFocus/Article/TabId/721/ArtMID/13629/ArticleID/17512/Understanding-the-%E2%80%98dark-night-of-the-soul%E2%80%99-.aspx

When the world looked at the face of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta), it saw pure, simple joy. Then, in 2007, 10 years after Blessed Teresa’s death, a collection of her private letters was published. Suddenly, the joy that the tiny sister from Albania once radiated seemed anything but simple.

As the letters revealed, for the entirety of her public ministry, the founder of the Missionaries of Charity endured unceasing feelings of desolation and abandonment by God. 

“I am told God lives in me,” she wrote in 1957, “and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

For some, the letters became a source of scandal. But for those familiar with the stages of spiritual growth, they served as a profound testimony to Blessed Teresa’s sanctity. In those decades of desolation, she lived what St. John of the Cross termed, the “dark night of the soul,” which was the title of a poem he wrote. 

The timing and duration of Mother Teresa’s dark night was unusual — and markedly so. But the fact that she encountered a dark night wasn’t. Every Christian, on their way to God, must pass through his or her own dark night. So, what is (and isn’t) the dark night of the soul?

It is necessary

 

Every fallen human being has disordered desires and attachments. We love what we shouldn’t love, or we love what we should but in the wrong way. We seek our own comfort, our own pleasure, our own will. We value what we want more than we value what God wants. We do wrong, even if only in our hearts.

But we can’t do wrong and stand before God. We can’t even want to do wrong and stand before God. A prerequisite for seeing God face to face is that every attachment to sin, both in our lives and in our hearts, must be broken. If we want to become saints, we have to desire only God’s will. And we have to desire God’s will not out of fear of hell, but rather out of love for heaven, out of love for God. Some of that breaking we do, as we learn to avoid vice and pursue virtue. But some of that breaking only God can do. The dark night of the soul is, in part, how he does that. By seemingly withdrawing all spiritual consolations — all the little comforts and supports that typically come from pursuing a relationship with him — and allowing an almost crushing sense of abandonment to descend upon us, he purifies our desires and prepares us for heaven.

It is unique

 

The dark night of the soul looks different in different lives. Laypersons don’t necessarily experience the dark night the way religious do. Nor do active religious necessarily experience the dark night the way contemplatives do. Some people experience it primarily through external circumstances. They find themselves persecuted or afflicted. In the midst of those afflictions, all calls for help go unanswered. To the person passing through this type of dark night, it feels like God has left them to deal with their cross on their own. 

Others experience the dark night through temptations: Temptations to pride, vanity, anger, sexual sin, and even unbelief assail them. Then, there are those who experience the dark night of the soul mainly through inner desolation: The gates of heaven seem barred against them, and no matter how much they pray, no consolation seemingly comes. Lastly, there are those who experience the dark night as a combination of all three: trials, temptations and abandonment.

Likewise, for some, the dark night comes but once. For others, it comes many times. Usually, it lasts for only a short while. Occasionally, it lasts much longer. But when it finally ends, it ends for good. A definitive work has been accomplished in the soul.

It is unpredictable

 

The dark night of the soul doesn’t come at the beginning of one’s journey to God. Traditionally, spiritual directors identify three primary stages (or ways) of growth in holiness. The first is the purgative way, where we break habits of vice, acquire habits of virtue and learn to live a Catholic life. The second is the illuminative way, where we grow in virtue, charity and the life of prayer. And the third is the unitive way, where our wills and hearts move in perfect harmony with God’s. 

Near the end of the purgative stage, we experience a type of dark night — a time of trial and affliction where it feels as if God no longer loves us. This dark night, however, is not the dark night of the soul. Rather, it’s the dark night of the senses. 

In the dark night of the senses, God purifies us of our attachments to the things of the world — physical comfort, physical pleasure, material success, popular acclaim — as well as of our consolations in prayer. Sorrows afflict us, and things that used to comfort us — food, sex, shopping, compliments, even the liturgy — no longer do. Through this dark night, God prepares us for the illuminative way and a deeper, more contemplative life of prayer.

The dark night of the soul occurs at the end of the illuminative way, as we prepare to enter the unitive way. During this dark night, God roots out our deepest attachments to sin and self, and the desolation that accompanies that rooting out is overwhelming and crushing. More than just a lack of consolation, this dark night plunges a soul into an abyss of darkness and nothingness, essentially revealing to us what we are without God and preparing us to not only carry our crosses, but to love our crosses and carry them joyfully in union with Christ.

It isn’t depression

 

From the outside, depression and the dark night of the soul bear a striking resemblance to one another. And they’re not entirely separate things. As St. John of the Cross noted long ago, depression (or as they called it in the 17th century, melancholia) can go hand in hand with a dark night, whether by exacerbating it or resulting from it.

But while clinical depression is triggered by an objectively sad event (losing a loved one, fatal illness, etc.) or by a biochemical problem, the dark night of the soul is purely an act of God; it is God working in our souls to draw us closer to him. 

Likewise, while depression weighs down both body and soul, eventually rendering those who suffer from it unable to go about the normal business of their life, throughout the dark night, the spirit stays strong, and those suffering through it can perform great works of charity and service. They remain active and don’t experience the same temptations to total self-loathing or suicide that those struggling with depression suffer, nor do they lose their faith in the midst of the dark night. Belief remains.

It isn’t evil

 

The dark night of the soul is not an evil to be endured; it’s a good for which we should be grateful. Of course, it doesn’t always seem that way. The thought of plunging into a spiritual abyss and losing all the sweetness in our relationship with God strikes few as appealing. But neither does surgery. Having cancer removed from our bodies isn’t a fun process. Nevertheless, we submit to the surgeon’s knife readily and quickly, knowing that the sooner we have the surgery, the sooner we can live a healthy, full life.

What’s true on the natural level is true on the supernatural level. If we want to become the people God made us to be and live the lives he made us to live, we must let him excise sin and unhealthy attachments from our souls. There’s no getting around it. Before we can enter heaven, it has to happen. It can happen in this life or it can happen in the next — in purgatory. But here is better. For the sooner we let God root out unhealthy attachments, the sooner we can get on with the business of being saints. 

And there’s no better business than that.

New Norms for the Role of Money in Saint-Making

The new norms may be a financial benefit for the Cause of Venerable Matt Talbot.

Money and Saint-Making
by Gerald O'Connell 

April 4-11, 2016 Issue

http://americamagazine.org/issue/money-and-saint-making

Continuing his reform of Vatican finances, Pope Francis issued a decree on March 4 approving new norms relating to the administration of the “goods,” mainly money, of the causes for beatification and canonization of saints in order to ensure full transparency and accountability in this area.

He took this decisive step after the commission he set up in July 2013 concluded that there was little or no oversight on how the considerable sums of money collected for a particular cause were spent. The commission’s report revealed that the system approved by St. John Paul II in 1983 lacked effective oversight and failed to prevent abuses. John Paul II beatified 1,138 persons and declared 482 saints, and it was known in Rome during his pontificate that money had been an important factor in advancing some of them.

In early August 2013, Francis received alarming reports from the commission on this matter, and he immediately ordered the blocking of some 400 accounts of the postulators of the causes of beatification and canonization held at the Institute for the Works of Religion (commonly called the Vatican Bank). That was but the first step; the new norms are the latest.

That there were abuses in the system was long known. It became public knowledge when two Italian journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, drawing on the commission’s leaked report, published books that revealed that while hundreds of thousands of euros were collected for a particular cause, there was little or no control over how this money was spent. The average cost for a beatification was around 500,000 euros (US $550,000). Fittipaldi, for example, highlighted the high costs for the cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Most of the 450 postulators are religious, but Nuzzi cited the report as revealing that two lawyers (laypeople, both named) handled a disproportionate share of the 2,500 causes, with 90 cases each. Moreover, the family of one of them was among the three printers given contracts by the congregation to print the position papers (sometimes several volumes) for the causes.

While holiness is indispensable for canonization, Francis acknowledges in his preface to the new norms that causes “require much work, involving expenses,” first at the local diocesan level, then at the Roman level (the congregation) and finally for the celebration of the beatifications and canonizations. While the parties that launch a cause give a contribution, he said the Apostolic See “bears the costs” at the Roman level and also has the task of overseeing the incomes and expenditures.

According to the new norms, when an “actor” (such as a diocese or religious order) accepts a cause, it then sets up a fund to advance it. Contributions to this fund may come from individuals or juridical persons. Furthermore, a cause needs a postulator to promote it, and he or she normally requires professional input from medical, research, legal and other personnel, who may demand fees for their services.

The new norms establish that each cause is to have an administrator, who can also be the postulator general. They define the administrator’s tasks as including presenting a budget and balance sheet each year to the competent authority, namely the bishop, eparch, major religious superior or other ecclesiastical authority. The competent authority has the obligation to exercise vigilance over the money flow, approve the balance sheets and send a copy to the congregation, the highest instance of oversight, which has the power to discipline those who may misuse funds.

For the Roman phase of the cause, the norms say the congregation requires a contribution from the one who launches the cause. The norms give precise regulations on how all the money is to be used at the different stages and insist that all financial contributions for causes must be sent by bank order.

A “solidarity fund” is to be established at the congregation, the norms state, and whenever money is left over from causes that have ended, it is to be deposited there. This fund is to be used for causes that lack money to get them started. Francis is well aware that whereas countless causes from Italy, Spain and Poland thrive every year, many in Latin America, Africa and Asia cannot even reach the starting blocks, or move forward from there, because of the lack of human and financial resources. That is another reform on his radar.



Suggested reference:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/csaints/documents/rc_con_csaints_doc_20160307_norme-beni-cause_en.html