St. John Henry Newman and Venerable Matt Talbot

As we recently posted on March 4, 2019 (http://venerablematttalbotresourcecenter.blogspot.com/search/label/Blessed%20John%20Henry%20Newman) Matt Talbot was basically illiterate when he signed a pledge not to drink, confessed his sins to a priest, and turned his life over to the care of God at the age of 28. He laboriously began to read over the years and would frequently ask his spiritual advisor and the Lord about certain words and what certain passages meant.

Over the years he read his Bible, the lives of saints, and books by saints. One day, in the timber yard during lunch break  Daniel Manning, a fellow worker, saw Matt reading Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman and said to Matt that he tried to read it but it was very difficult to understand. Matt simply answered that when he got a book like that he always prayed to Our Blessed Lady and she always inspired him to take the correct meaning from the words. See page 101 at

https://issuu.com/aidtothechurchinneed/docs/matt_talbot_times

It is interesting a book was published in 1945 and 1946 by different publishers with the same content but with different titles:  Saints for the Times and John Henry Newman, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, Matt Talbot  by Reverend Thomas J. McCarthy,Ph.D. at https://venerablematttalbotresourcecenter.blogspot.com/2016/07/matt-talbot-common-man_19.html

Hopefully the day will come when Venerable Matt Talbot will be proclaimed a saint.

An Example of Matt Talbot’s Virtue

Having mentioned Matt Talbot in this keynote speech probably has expanded awareness about Matt and his life.

Keynote Speech by Sr Catherine Joseph Droste OP (Vice-Dean of Theology, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas) at Diocesan Forum on Marriage in Helsinki on October 28, 2017 (https://www.studium.fi/uploads/4/2/7/2/42724907/sr_catherine_joseph_droste_op_keynote_the_beauty_of_marriage_helsinki_2017.pdf

“Virtue, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is a good quality of mind, by which a person lives righteously, and of which he / she cannot make bad use...”

“...A concrete example of Thomas’s definition of virtue arises in the life of Matt Talbot, an Irish drunk of the early 20th century. Talbot spent his evenings and weekends getting drunk in local pubs. One Friday evening, he found himself in sorry situation, not only had he spent his week’s wages, but none of his friends were willing to buy him a pint. In a moment of grace, Matt realized just how low he had sunk. He didn’t get drunk that night but went home to bed. Talbot knew that one night of sobriety did not mean he possessed any virtue, and that the slightest temptation would send him headlong into a drunken stupor. But firmly determined to change his life, and to avoid temptation, he not only changed his normal path of walking to work (to avoid the pubs) but kept no money in his pockets. Eventually his perseverance paid off and he acquired the virtue – ‘a permanent disposition’ not only to avoid getting drunk, but to do it with facility, promptly, and with joy. That’s virtue.”

Active Addiction - a Form of Gluttony

When we think or hear the word “glutton,” our first thought might be of a person who simply eats too much too often. But how many people today think, or in Matt Talbot’s early life thought, active alcoholism and other  addictions as a form of gluttony? 

As noted in the following article, Fr. Longenecker  comments on various forms of gluttony and that the original search for “comfort and sense of well being and happiness” is really found in a “strong relationship with God and a life of true goodness, truth and beauty.”

Seeking Satisfaction - Gluttony
Fr. Dwight Longenecker

September 24, 2014

Catholic Exchange

Source: http://catholicexchange.com/seeking-satisfaction-gluttony

“There is a grotesque scene in the Monty Python film The Meaning of Life in which a hugely corpulent character named Mr Creosote eats a gigantic meal, vomits repeatedly and then, after eating a tiny after dinner mint, explodes. The comedy is completely outrageous, but you can’t miss the explicitly revolting depiction of gluttony.

Being heavy is not always caused by gluttony, nor does one need to be enormously obese to be guilty of gluttony. St Thomas Aquinas (who was himself overweight) defined five forms of gluttony: 1. eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly;  2. eating food that is excessive in quantity; 3. eating food that is too daintily or elaborately prepared; 4. eating too soon or at an inappropriate time;  5. eating too eagerly. Gluttony includes any form of addiction. Drug abuse, caffeine or sugar addictions and alcoholism are forms of gluttony, but so is any inordinate attachment to food and drink. Similarly C.S.Lewis (who knew how to down a few pints of beer) points out than being overly fussy about food and drink can also be a form of gluttony. A person who insists on their steak being done “just so” then complains and rejects it is also placing too much selfish attention on food.

We think of gluttony as socially unattractive, but a sophisticated person dining daintily at a fine restaurant may very well be guilty of gluttony because they love their food and drink too much. Indeed, a connoisseur may be a very refined glutton.

Gluttony is a deadly sin not because it is unattractive but because there is a deeper problem. The glutton uses food for something other than its proper intention. Food is given for our nourishment, our enjoyment and for the fellowship of sharing with others. The glutton uses food simply to give himself pleasure or comfort. Think of a baby with a bottle. Not only does he gain nourishment, but he enjoys a feeling of comfort and relief from the warm drink. It’s okay for babies, but we’re supposed to outgrow the need for comfort food, and we shouldn’t need to rely on inebriation of alcohol or the false high of drugs to find the peace and happiness we long for.

To put it plainly, the glutton seeks in food, alcohol or drugs the comfort, and sense of well being and happiness that he should find in a strong relationship with God and a life of true goodness, truth and beauty. That is why the lively virtue that counters the deadly vice of gluttony is temperance.

The seventeenth century poet Thomas Traherne wrote, “Can a man be just unless he loves all things according to their worth?” Temperance is that virtue that empowers us to see the good in all things and to love them without being inordinately attached. Temperance in our consumption of food and drink also helps us to establish temperance in our relationship to other material things in life.

A person who is gluttonous is also likely to be greedy. The person who seeks comfort, peace and happiness in food and drink probably also clings to material things hoping to find security, peace and happiness. By exercising the virtue of temperance in the area of food and drink we will also find victory over our inordinate attachment to our money and possessions.

Temperance is the virtue that allows us to enjoy food and drink to the full, but avoids excess realizing that to abuse the gift is to destroy it. Temperance is therefore gratitude in action. By enjoying God’s gifts in the right proportion and in the right relationship to all things we are saying “Thanks” to God and living in the abundant life he promises.”

Note: To read a perspective on gluttony published during Matt Talbot’s lifetime, see Delany, J. (1909). Gluttony. In The Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06590a.htm

A reference to "the temperance of Matt Talbot"

 

The following excerpt that mentions Venerable Matt Talbot is from Christ the Savior, Based on the Writings of the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, for the Confraternity of the Precious Blood by Frs. Walter Farrell and Martin Healy. This chapter can be read online at http://www.catholictradition.org/Christ/christ1-8.htm and the entire book at http://www.catholictradition.org/Christ/christ.htm.

“AS THERE ARE MANY and different members in a living human body, so, too, Christ and the Holy Spirit have placed numerous and diverse members in the Church. As we have just said, some members of the Church are placed in positions of authority, and they are endowed with the graces necessary for teaching, ruling and sanctifying. To the others are given the graces required for obeying and serving the Church. But in all the members of the Church, whether they be rulers or ruled, God produces an astonishing variety of graces which gives the Church the great beauty that is to be found in any living body. In the Church there are humble missioners with the gift of tongues or of persuasive preaching. We can find, also, intellectual geniuses such as St. Thomas or St. Bonaventure. In the Church God produces the zeal of St. Paul, the charity of St. John the Evangelist, the fortitude of Pope Gregory VII or  of St. Arnbrose, the temperance of Matt Talbot, the humility of the Cure of Ars, the purity of St. Agnes, the crusading spirit of St. Louis of France, the martyrdom of St. Maria Goretti.”

"Will it!"

[From that moment in September 1884 when the penniless 28 year old Matt Talbot felt humiliated (“cut to the heart”) by his drinking friends’ refusal to buy him a drink at O'Meara's pub, Matt turned all his efforts (for the remaining 41 years of his life) to increasing his union with God and developing his life of prayer.]

Becoming A Saint In One Easy Step
Jonathan Doyle
June 8, 2013
http://beingcatholic.com.au/becoming-a-saint-in-one-easy-step/


...One day (St) Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very simple but very important question. “How do you become a saint?” He paused, looked at her and said quietly, “Will it!”
For a man who wrote the Suma Theologiae this was a rather economic answer but an incredibly powerful one nonetheless.

The Problem With Saints.

A big problem for all of us as Catholics is that when we think of saints we often think of hair shirts, flagellation or near starvation on some foreign mission. We need to realise this is a massive error.

There are a few important things about saints we need to know. First, we can ALL become one. No really. I’m not joking.

Second, what is a saint? Best I can tell a saint is just a person who somewhere along the line decided that God was utterly central to their existence and then pursued that relationship in whatever form it took. Think of Francis, Ignatius, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Theresa. They all had some form of extraordinary encounter and then followed that encounter where it led for the rest of their lives and become both transformed and transformative of their world. They never really set out to be saints, though Ignatius was pretty motivated to have a crack when he read the lives of the saints after the battle of Pamplona.

The Communion of Sinners

Another crucial thing about saints is that many of them, though by no means all, were raving fornicators and pagans at some point. St. Augustine and Thomas Merton, along with others, fathered illegitimate children, Ignatius was a solider and may have killed people, Dorothy Day (who may be canonised soon) had an abortion and several partners as part of New York’s bohemian set in the 1930′s. Matthew Talbot was a chronic alcoholic, and on it goes.

What this means is that you and I have to surrender this idea that somehow we will never be saints unless we start acting like extras from The Sound of Music or The Flying Nun.

Two Simple Things

First, this will sound crazy but you are made for sainthood. In the classroom, in the home, on the bus, at the pub, each moment offers you the chance to encounter God a little more deeply – if you ‘will it’.

God made you for His friendship and that is what sainthood is, friendship with God as the form and foundation of your daily life. If that part happens you won’t be able to stop the process of loving people and changing the world in whatever small way he calls you to.

Second, let’s go back to Thomas Aquinas. We just need to ‘will it’. We just need to cultivate a deep daily desire to encounter God. The rest will take care of itself.