Venerable Matt Talbot: The Saint of Sobriety

The Irish alcoholic conquered addiction with the help of grace, prayer and penance, and lived a life completely transformed by Jesus and Mary.

(Photo: Denver Catholic illustration)

Matthew “Matt” Talbot was born in Dublin, Ireland, on May 2, 1856, the second child to Charlie and Elizabeth Talbot. He was one of twelve children, nine of whom survived infancy.

Life in Ireland in the years following the Great Famine was difficult, and many poor, working families like the Talbots struggled to get by. Charlie Talbot was a drinker, and that drinking made the family's financial situation tenuous.

At twelve, Matt Talbot began to work for a wine merchant, but he soon began “sampling” the wine before it was bottled. When he returned home drunk, his father made him work elsewhere, hoping to prevent Talbot from following in his footsteps. Like so many others who suffer from addiction, Talbot seemed predisposed (whether by nature, nurture or both) to succumb to alcoholism.

He began working on the docks and, at seventeen, as a building laborer. His drinking became worse, and by the time he was an adult, he was an alcoholic.

For the next fifteen years, Talbot’s life was marked by excessive drinking. The wages he earned as a day laborer were squandered at the pubs immediately. He would sell his clothes, even his shoes, to pay for his drinks. His disease wreaked havoc on Talbot’s mind, heart and soul. His formerly kind disposition was lost to crassness, irritability, selfishness, irresponsibility and a violent temperament, making him prone to fights.

His alcoholism drove him to begging, bartering and scrounging. There was even an occasion where he stole a fiddle from a street performer to pawn for drinking money.

His mother was deeply worried for her son and prayed for him constantly. At the time, there were few available resources for Talbot to get help, though they did exist. Still, he was utterly unwilling to acknowledge the tremendous harm drinking was doing to him and to his family. Even so, his parents were such adamant Catholics, working earnestly to instill the practice of the faith in their children, that Talbot attended Sunday Mass, though he had long since drifted from receiving the sacraments.

Taking "The Pledge"

When he was 28, Talbot found himself unemployed for a week. The pubs wouldn’t take his credit any longer (he was accustomed to running up a hefty tab), so he could not get a drink. He waited outside a pub for his friends to offer to pay for him, but no one did.

All at once, it seemed his mother’s prayers bore fruit. Talbot was disgusted and grieved at what he had made of his life. Without work, money, friends, faith or purpose, his disease had taken everything from him. At least, almost everything.

Like the Prodigal Son, he turned back and returned home, where his mother was waiting for him. He told her he wanted to give up the drink. He would take “the pledge” and leave drinking behind him — at least temporarily.

Talbot made his pledge at Holy Cross College in Clonliffe, and his mother prayed even more fervently that he would be sustained in sobriety by the love of Christ and the Blessed Mother. That following Saturday, Talbot went to Confession and received the Eucharist. From that moment, he entrusted the whole of his life to Christ and the Blessed Mother.

The first seven years of sobriety were brutal. Nearly his entire life had been marked by drinking, and his withdrawals were extremely difficult. Not only was Talbot struggling against his physical and mental dependence on alcohol, but he also found himself at odds with most of his community: all his friends, his fellow laborers, his father and his brothers were drinkers. They expected Talbot would return to the pubs in no time, but he didn’t.

To fight against the loneliness, Talbot had his mother, the Blessed Mother and Christ to support him. That was all, but that was enough.

To combat his physical and mental dependency, he subjected himself to increasingly strict practices of penance: he fasted, prayed on his knees, slept on a board and rose very early in the morning before work to attend Mass. By redirecting his mind and body continually to the service and things of God, Talbot gradually replaced his former way of living. Step by step and day by day, he began to live utterly for God; slowly, he found himself being renewed by the Holy Spirit (Romans 12:2).

He took a new pledge, this time motivated by love rather than disgust. He vowed to abstain from alcohol for the rest of his life.

The Life of Sobriety

Talbot’s childhood Catholic faith sustained him, especially in the Rosary and the Mass, which he attended daily and twice on Sundays. He now lived for the love of Christ and his Blessed Mother. The relief he used to feel only in drunkenness he now found in reciting the Rosary and in receiving the Eucharist.

It wasn’t just his drinking that he fought against, but all his vices.

Alcohol had made him give in to his temper; in sobriety, Tablot cultivated a spirit of meekness and gentleness.

Alcohol had made him selfish; in sobriety, Talbot gave away all his money except what little he needed to live on and, eventually, also to support his aging mother. He cared for her with great patience and love after his father’s passing, and she died in the peaceful knowledge that her son, freed from addiction, was safely under the care of the Blessed Mother.

Alcohol had made him dishonest; in sobriety, Talbot became obsessed with honesty. He went about trying to make retribution to those whom his drinking had hurt, repaying debts and amending broken relationships. He searched diligently for the street musician whose fiddle he had stolen and sold, but, unable to find him, instead had Mass said for him.

His sobriety allowed him clarity of mind to learn to read, and he became an ardent student of theology and mysticism, reading St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Louis de Montfort and St. Thomas More, among many others. Those who worked with him said that when laborers had a chance to rest, Talbot would return immediately to reading and prayer.

His spirituality was markedly Franciscan, especially in his love of poverty, humility and sacrifice, as well as his care for the poor and weak. For the last thirty-five years of his life, he was a devout Third Order Franciscan.

Matt’s life of prayer instilled in him a deeper concern about the well-being of his fellow men, and he became a passionate advocate for the rights of laborers until his death.

Matt Talbot, The Saint?

Matt Talbot’s sanctity was little known until his death on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 1925. He died of heart failure on his way to his second Sunday Mass.

When his body was examined, they discovered a chain with religious medals around his waist, a lighter chain around one arm and his Third Order Franciscan cord tied around the other arm. Another light chain was wound around his leg with a rope around the other. He wore his chains and cords as a tangible reminder that he, who had been a slave to drink, was now bound in service to the love of God and neighbor.

He was buried in his Franciscan habit on June 11, the Feast of Corpus Christi.

In 1931, the Archbishop of Dublin opened the initial investigation into Matt Talbot’s life (the first step in the canonization process). In 1962, Talbot's remains were placed in a granite tomb and inscribed “The Servant of God, Matthew Talbot.” In 1975, Pope Paul VI declared he “Venerable,” formally recognizing that he lived a life of heroic virtue.

Matt Talbot’s life was marked by simplicity and abandonment to the freedom only Christ can give. He was certainly empowered by grace, especially because of his mother’s prayers, in his struggle against addiction, but Talbot was thoroughly human. His strength in the face of addiction was not his own, but Christ’s, whose “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Venerable Matt Talbot has become not only a sign of hope for so many struggling with addiction but also an example to follow. He did not simply stop drinking but began to fast, frequent the Sacraments and pray daily. To discipline his body, he practiced bodily penance. To discipline his mind, he learned to read, focusing on spiritual books. To discipline his soul, he loved his neighbors with a single-minded love of God in them.

Like Matt Talbot, we too must recognize what is ugly within us and desire to be rid of it. But also like Matt Talbot, we are not meant to simply despise the ugliness, but seek after the True, the Good and the Beautiful.

Matt Talbot can become for us, too, a source of comfort and a heavenly friend and intercessor. In his humble simplicity, the faithful continue to find an example to be imitated of the transformative and freeing love of Christ, who “came that they might have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).