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.

.

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.

The Dublin Mystic: Matt Talbot

by K. V. Turley*

March 17, 2016

http://catholicexchange.com/the-dublin-mystic-matt-talbot

On 8 June 1925, the following news item appeared in the Irish Independent:

Unknown Man’s Death

An elderly man collapsed in Granby Lane [Dublin] yesterday, and being taken to Jervis Street Hospital he was found to be dead. He was wearing a tweed suit, but there was nothing to indicate who he was. 

What was not reported was the unusual discovery when he was taken to hospital. He was wearing heavy chains: some wrapped around his legs, others on his body. Mortuary staff puzzled over not just who he was but, also, the meaning of the chains.

The newspaper report had appeared on a Monday morning. Later that night, police ushered a woman into the mortuary. She identified the body as that of her brother: Matt Talbot. A nursing nun present asked about the chains. The dead man’s sister replied simply that it was something he wore, and with that, they were placed in the coffin and the lid closed.

That was not the whole story though; the chains were part of the mystery of the man who had died. They were as symbolic as they were real. The man’s life having been a ‘crossing over’ from the servitude of vice to the freedom of those in chains for Christ.

Talbot was born in 1856 into a large Catholic family living in semi-poverty in Dublin. His schooling was slight. He was barely literate when he went to work full-time aged just 11 years old. For the rest of his life his occupation was as an unskilled labourer. He was exposed to harsh working conditions, at times harsh bosses and to a social environment that necessitated some form of release from this – this was found by many in the city’s public houses. Matt was no different, so much so that by his teenage years he was hopelessly addicted to alcohol.

Matt had the reputation of being a hard worker. Increasingly, however, that work ethic was simply the means to finance his ‘hard drinking’. As it grips, vice of whatever sort is hard to counter, especially when the will to oppose it diminishes, so it was with Matt Talbot – what had began as an escape soon became a prison of moral and spiritual degradation. And, the more time he spent there the more Matt needed alcohol to shield him from that reality. Those around watched and, shaking their heads, concluded that Talbot was a lost cause. But they were to be proved wrong and in a most unexpected way.

Fittingly, the second phase of Matt’s life began outside a pub. That day he had no money, and, therefore, hoped that some of his drinking fraternity would stand him a drink. As each acquaintance filed past, none offered to buy him anything. On that summer’s day in 1884, something occurred that was to change Matt Talbot forever. Humiliated by the indifference of his erstwhile friends, he turned and walked straight home. His mother was surprised to see him – at that early hour, and sober. He proceeded to clean himself up before announcing he was going to a nearby seminary to ‘take the pledge’ – a promise to abstain from all alcohol. His mother was mystified by this and fearful. She knew that pledges made to God were not something to be taken lightly. She counselled him against doing any such thing unless he was intent on persevering. He listened, and then left.

Matt did take the pledge that day. He also went to Confession. It was as dramatic as it was decisive. It had all the hallmarks of a genuine conversion, one as sincere as it was needed. Nevertheless, a conversion takes but a moment, the work of sanctity a lifetime: after years of drunkenness, still arraigned against Matt was a weakness of character and a world that revolved around alcohol. It looked as if the odds were stacked against him, but this was not solely a human undertaking. Into this ‘land of captivity’, from ‘across the Jordan’, there came invisible armies to fight alongside this now embattled soul, one embarked upon a war of liberation. This was not a new spiritual combat, but rather one that had commenced many years previously when this poor man’s parents brought a child to a parish church and asked for baptism in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

After his conversion, not much changed, outwardly at least: Matt continued with his employment in the docks. He continued to work hard, now respected more than ever by his fellow workers and employers who noticed that he had started to give his wages to his mother rather than straight to a publican. Nevertheless, work alone cannot satisfy the human heart. Previously, when not working his life had been many hours spent in public houses, but, now, he had turned his back on that. He had been ‘born anew’, but like a newborn was vulnerable to the world he inhabited. With no material substance to cling to he turned inward, to the Spirit that dwells within each baptised soul. And, as he did so, he commenced upon an adventure that few could have imagined possible.

From then on, along the Dublin streets, there moved a mystic soul. Each morning at 5AM, dressed in workman’s clothes a man knelt outside a city church waiting for the doors to open and the first Mass to begin. After the Holy Sacrifice, he would pray for a time before going to one of the timber yards near the docks. There, he laboured all day; but there were periods in the day when lulls and breaks would occur. Whilst his fellow workers gossiped or smoked, Matt chose to be alone, knelt in prayer in a hidden part of a workshop until the call came to return to his labours.

***

Each evening, when work was finished, Matt walked home with his fellow workers. They knew their companion’s free time was spent praying in some city church before the Blessed Sacrament. Often he asked them to join him in making a visit to Our Blessed Lord. Some did. After a short while, however, they would leave with Matt still knelt in the gathering twilight. Eventually, when at night he did return home it was to yet more prayer – and mortification. His bed was a plank of wood, a piece of that same material his pillow. Although respected by those he lived amongst and worked alongside, and not unfriendly, he had few visitors. Those who did encounter him felt he was not quite of this world; they were right; he was travelling ever inwards on a mystical journey to a freedom he could never have dreamt of when trapped in an alcoholic stupor.

When his belongings were found after his death, one of the surprises was the number of books he owned. Inquires soon revealed that he had slowly, but determinedly, taught himself to read and, as he did so, effectively began a course of study that included the spiritual classics, the lives of Saints, doctrinal books, and works of mystical and ascetical theology. When asked how he, a poor workman, could read the works of St. Augustine, Newman et al, his reply was as straightforward as it was telling. He said he asked the Holy Spirit to enlighten him. And so, he grew in an intellectual understanding of his faith, which in turn deepened the prayer and penance he undertook. Here was a 20^th Century heir to the spiritual traditions of the ancient Irish monks, albeit one now living not on an island monastery but in the slums of Dublin, but, like those earlier contemplatives his life was work, study and prayer with eyes turned ever inward to the Holy Trinity.

Matt never married; held no position of note, was unknown outside his own small circle of family and friends – only one blurred photograph has survived him- and, yet, this was a rare man: one who had taken the Gospel at its word and lived it.

His lifetime ran alongside the then momentous events in Irish history. A time of cultural renaissance and nationalist fervour, of a Great Strike in 1913 and open revolution in 1916, of the Great War and a War for Independence, throughout it all his life remained largely unchanged. Matt knew all too well that kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but that he had set his face to serve a different Kingdom, one shown him in 1884 when he confessed all and cast himself into the hands of the Living God.

By 1925, Matt was 69. He had been in poor health for some time. Out of necessity he tried to continue working as there was only limited relief for the poor or elderly, but his strength was failing. Nevertheless, he persisted in his prayer and penance. On 7 June 1925, whilst struggling down a Dublin alleyway on his way to Mass, he fell. A small crowd gathered around him. A Dominican priest was called from the nearby church, the one where Matt had been hurrying. The priest came and knelt over the fallen man. Realising what had happened, he lifted his hand in a blessing for the final journey. Little did he realise the dead stranger lying in front of him had already been on that ‘journey’ for over 40 years.

Having lived in the intimacy of the Triune God, it was apt Matt died on Trinity Sunday. Having lived off the Eucharist daily for more than 40 years, it was equally fitting he was buried on the feast of Corpus Christi.

Decades later, a visiting Italian priest went privately to pray at the grave of the Dublin worker he had heard so much about. In 1975, and after the due process had been completed, that same cleric, now Pope Paul VI, bestowed a new title upon that Irish workman: Venerable Matt Talbot.

There is a large trunk in the safe keeping of the Archdiocese of Dublin. It contains the books owned by Venerable Matt Talbot. A veritable treasury of spiritual theology, one of the books contained therein is True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort. In its pages it reflects on being a slave to this world or to the Blessed Virgin. For those that choose the latter path it recommends, after due recourse to a spiritual director and the suitable enrolment, that a chain be worn to symbolise that that soul no longer belongs to the powers of darkness but is now a child of the light. On that June day in 1925, when Matt Talbot fell upon a Dublin street, it was dressed as a slave to Mary and as an ambassador of Christ.

*K. V. Turley is a London based freelance writer and filmmaker with a degree in theology.

Matt Talbot: Also the Workers’ Saint

 

Whereas Venerable Matt Talbot (1856-1925) may be known most frequently as the patron saint of alcoholics, he is also considered as the Workers’ Saint.

A search of our site and elsewhere online notes “worker” or “labourer” in the title of articles and books about Matt. For example, the title of an article at http://www.catholicireland.net/saintoftheday/matt-talbot-the-workers-saint/ is "Venerable Matt Talbot - The Workers' Saint" and the first sentence states: “Matt Talbot was a Dubliner who struggled with a drink problem, then led a severe ascetical life, and became known after his death as the Workers' Saint.” 

In an article about St. Joseph the Worker at

http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/2010/04/st-joseph-the-worker/, that included such headings as The Gospel of Work and Your Workplace is Holy Ground, Matt and others are mentioned as examples:

 

“...One thinks here of Ven. Matt Talbot, the Dublin workman who spent a lifetime as a laborer on building-sites; he would offer his daily work, in union with St. Joseph, to the Divine Workman, of whom he once remarked in his laconic way, “Christ the Carpenter must have a close interest in those who work.”

 

One also thinks here of Bl. Charles de Foucauld; wishing to share St. Joseph’s lowly status as a manual worker, he prevailed upon the Poor Clares, during his sojourn in Nazareth, to allot him the task of sweeping their convent floors.

Examples abound of Christian zeal in offering to God work of every kind in the spirit of penance and prayer. St. Benedict was imbued with this principle, as is seen in his famous motto: “To work is to pray.” Similarly St. Bernadette; on becoming an invalid she famously declared that this was the newfound employment she could and would offer to God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins had a sharp insight into how the humblest tasks, howsoever low-grade they may be socially and economically, can glorify God and sanctify the worker.”

Ballad of Matt Talbot

Davey Inthevalley wrote and sings this song about "Dublin's beloved Venerable Matt Talbot," which was published on 15 June 2015.

What apparently struck Davey about Matt was that Matt was an ordinary man, a hard worker, and eventually found grace that lead him to true sobriety.

Matt Talbot and the 1913 Dublin Lockout

The source of the following article by Fr. Tom Ryan is from http://www.shannonparish.ie/category/fr-toms-courier-column.
Information about the 21st Annual Matt Talbot Novena is also available with a list of the speakers at
http://www.shannonparish.ie/2013/09/matt-talbot-novena-2013/.
 

“For the Tuesdays of October and November 2013, we invite you to join us for our 21st annual Matt Talbot Novena, praying for all suffering or sharing in the life of addiction.

Addiction is defined as a craving or obsession not only for substances such as alcohol, tobacco and other drugs but also a psychological dependency on things such as gambling, food, pornography, video games, internet, work, exercise, self harming etc. Addictions lead to all sorts of problems at home, work, school and in the community which can in turn cause guilt, shame, anxiety and rejection.

Matt Talbot’s addiction was alcohol. Matt’s programme of recovery was built around devotion to the Eucharist, love of Mary Mother of God and prayer, but he never forgot his struggle with his addiction. The life and example of Matt Talbot is an inspiration and help to people to overcome and accept their problems and difficulties.

This year marks the centenary of the 1913 Dublin Lockout. In the early autumn of that year, the heartless lords of industry locked out some 20,000 poorly paid Dublin workers, most of them with large hungry families. The reason for all of this was the spirited refusal of the workers to sever their connection with Jim Larkin’s founded Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. The average weekly wage was five shillings (less that 90 cent in today’s Euro), working in excess of 80 hours per week.

Matt Talbot, as a poorly paid worker himself, admired and respected Jim Larkin and he became a member of the ITGWU, a link only severed by his death. Matt spent most of his time during the Lockout praying in Gardiner Street Church.

The final days of 1913 witnessed a rapid decline in the workers’ fortunes. Food supplies had dwindled disastrously and funds for fresh supplies were non-existent. During January and early February 1914, the men gradually returned to their work. As broken as they were with little or no improvement in their wages, they had yet gained a political victory. The employers, despite their best efforts, had failed to break Jim Larkin’s Union. In the ensuing years, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union went from strength to strength. Matt was a fully paid up member of the ITGWU for the rest of his life. In 1923, Matt became very ill and was unable to work. He received sick pay, fifteen shillings from the Union.

He died in Granby Lane, Dublin on 7th June 1925 on his way to Church. It was the feast of The Holy Trinity. Matt’s life and story is not time bound. Matt was not a colourful character; he had a very simple personality. He was a man who had great faith rooted in prayer and the Eucharist; he possessed a great sense of justice, especially for workers. Matt was a man who overcame addiction by using primarily the spiritual resources that are available to all who suffer addiction. His conquering of addiction was with free will and the help of God. These two ingredients, free will and God’s help, are still readily available to all of us on our own journey through life, in our battles with our own addictions.”


Also note these references:

http://www.matttalbot.ie/matt-on-strike.htm

Reflections on Work and Workers

The 1913 Strike and Lockout

Matt Talbot, Patron of Labourers

While there are many recognized saints who are listed with multiple and diverse patronages, like St. Monica and St. Joseph, there are some who are known principally for one or two patronages, such as St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe among addicts and prisoners. (While not a drug addict himself, St. Kolbe was killed by Nazis with an injection of carbolic acid in the extermination camp of Auschwitz in 1941.)

Although (yet to be canonized) Venerable Matt Talbot is widely regarded solely as patron for alcoholics, he certainly qualifies as being considered a patron for labourers (laborers/workers), as those in the USA celebrate Labor Day today. Matt did manual labor his entire life, beginning at the age of 12.

Reflections on Work and Workers

These links are provided for reflection on work and workers today in the USA and nearly a century ago in Matt Talbot's Dublin.

The first link is a personal reflection by Deacon Keith Fournier on the Catholic Church's perspective on the dignity, meaning, and redemptive value of all human work.

See http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=29071

In keeping with their annual Labor Day tradition, the US Bishops have released the following statement on the dignity of human work: http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=29072

Life, work, and workers were significantly different during Matt's lifetime.The first link provides a perspective on various themes in Dublin in 1911, when Matt was a 55 year old labourer with 27 years of sobriety: http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/index.html

This link, The 1913 Strike and Lockout, is self-explanatory.

Remembering Matt Talbot on Labor Day

Today is Labor Day in the USA.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day)

Whereas the saintly Matt Talbot is considered by many as the patron of alcoholics and other addicts, he may also be considered the "workers' saint." Even during his alcoholic years, Matt was praised by his employers as an exemplary worker.

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/