THE CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF VENERABLE MATT TALBOT - 7TH JUNE 2025

Fr Billy Swan

On the 7th June 1925, Matt Talbot died suddenly in Granby Lane in Dublin just yards from St Saviour’s Church in the city Centre where he was on his way to Mass on what was Trinity Sunday that year. His funeral took place on 11th June and he was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. In 1972, his remains were removed from Glasnevin and transferred to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Sean McDermott St in Dublin city.

Matt Talbot was born on 2nd May 1856, the second of twelve children. He was baptised in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on 5th May that year. His father was a volatile man who struggled with the same addiction that his son would also suffer later in life. This lead to a turbulent home environment. He attended St Laurence O’Toole’s school and O’Connell’s CBS in Dublin but his attendance at classes was poor. He left school early and secured work as a messenger boy for wine merchants and later with the Port and Docks Board. It was a job that gave him easy access to alcohol and within a short space of time, the young man Matt Talbot developed a serious addiction problem. He pawned whatever he could to buy drink. On one occasion, he stole a violin from a street entertainer and sold it to buy drink.

One evening in 1884, Matt admitted that his addiction had become so bad that he was not capable of reforming his life by his own powers. He was out of control and needed saving. He went into Holy Cross College on Clonliffe Road, met a priest and took a three-month pledge of total abstinence, later renewed for six months and then for life. Long before Alcoholic Anonymous began in 1935 in America, Matt Talbot realised that the power he needed to beat his addiction was greater than himself and that the help he required was outside of his own resources. In the Twelve-Step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first, second and third steps describe the journey of Matt Talbot and represent a pathway of hope to those who struggle with addiction today.

The first step is to admit to oneself that I am powerless over alcohol – that my life has become un-manageable. This was the realisation that spurred Matt reaching out for help that day in Holy Cross College in 1884.

The second step is to believe that only a Power greater than oneself can restore me to sanity. For Matt Talbot, this Power was God and his merciful love.

The third step is the turning of ones will and one’s life over to the care of God as we understood Him. This is what Matt did as he entrusted his whole life and future to God’s providence.

From the day he took that pledge, Matt committed himself to what he believed was the only thing that could save him, namely his faith in God. He attended morning Mass daily before going to work and spent his evenings in deep prayer before Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament inside churches in Dublin.

Around this time, Matt also developed a habit of penitential observances in the spirit of the ancient Irish monks and the Desert Fathers. He slept on a bed made of planks and rested his head on a wooden block.

On the day he died, it was discovered in Jervis St hospital that he was wearing chains and chords in reparation for his past excesses and those of others. He went to confession weekly, seeing it as an opportunity to humble himself before God and to receive the healing power and grace of divine mercy. He fasted regularly, surviving mainly on tea and dry bread, eating meat, fish or eggs only occasionally.

He believed that the help of God that he came to depend on, was also mediated through others. He joined the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association that was founded by the Jesuit priest, Fr James Cullen in 1898 – around the time when Matt began to drink. It was a group that helped Matt retain sobriety and to assure him that others were there to help and support him. It also had a spirituality of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which helped Matt detach himself from alcohol and attach himself more to the love of the heart of Christ. He once wrote:

‘Never be too hard on the man who can’t give up drink. It’s as hard to give up the drink as it is to raise the dead to life again. But both are possible and even easy for Our Lord. We have only to depend on him’.

Matt Talbot was declared a ‘Servant of God’ on 28th November 1947 and ‘Venerable’ by Pope St Paul VI on 3rd October 1975. In our modern age in which we have more addictions than we care to admit, Matt Talbot gives us hope that no one is out of reach of 'the hope that his call holds for us' (Eph. 1:18).

For that reason, during this Jubilee Year and on the centenary of the death of Matt Talbot, may we walk forward on the path of life as pilgrims of hope, helping each other not to succumb to the slavery of addiction by cultivating a deep and lasting friendship with the Lord Jesus whom Matt Talbot came to know and love as Saviour and friend.

Venerable Matt Talbot, pray for us!