Vénérable Matt Talbot
Matt Talbot (1856-1925) est un irlandais connu dans le monde entier pour sa lutte contre l’alcoolisme… Bien que sa vie ne nous soit que partiellement connue, Matt Talbot est une figure des plus mystérieuse… Vénéré par les catholiques pour s’être sortit de l’alcool, Matt Talbot est considéré par de nombreux chrétiens comme le Saint Patrons des alcooliques de par sa piété, ainsi que pour sa mortification de la chair…
Biographie de Matt Talbot
Une Jeunesse marquée par l’alcoolisme
Matt Talbot naît au sein d’une famile pauvre de Dublin. Second d’une famille de 12 enfants, Matt est souvent livré à lui-même, et connaît très jeune les affres de l’alcoolisme, influencé par son père et son frère, également exposés à la forte consommation d’alcool… Matt Talbot quitte alors l’école à l’âge de 12 ans, et décroche un travail dans un magasin de vente de bière, ce qui n’améliore guère son alcoolisme… Très vite lassé par cet emploi, il trouve un nouvel emploi dans un magasin de whiskey… C’est alors l’escalade : Matt Talbot boit au travail, dépense tout son argent au Pub, emprunte des sommes à son entourage et s’accable peu à peu de dettes… Il en va jusqu’à voler un fiddle pour le vendre et le dépenser en alcool…
Matt Talbot décide de lutter contre son alcoolisme
C’est en 1884, que Matt semble au plus mal. Prenant peu à peu conscience de son alcoolisme récurrent, celui-ci décide de « prendre l’engagement » de s’arrêter de boire… Pour ce faire, il se rend au Collège de Sainte Croix de Clonliffe, et fait serment de cesser de boire durant 3 mois… Cette période s’écoule alors lentement, et Matt peine à se sevrer, mais y parvient malgré tout sans écarts… A la fin des 3 mois, Matt décide de prolonger cet engagement, et s’engage pour 6 mois, puis pour la vie… S’en sera alors finit pour lui de l’alcoolisme : jamais plus nous le verrons une pinte à la main.
Au départ insensible à la religion, Talbot redécouvre le catholicisme à l’issue de son sevrage… Dès lors, Talbot décide de mener une vie de piété et de générosité… Dès 1890, Talbot devient membre de l’ordre franciscain, et intègre en 1915 un minuscule appartement dans Dublin où il mène une vie d’acète, mangeant peu, dormant sur des planches de bois, priant à toute occasion (même au travail), et se rendant de messes en messes dès que le temps le lui permet…
Mort de Talbot
Talbot meurt le 7 juin 1925, alors qu’il se rend à la messe… Ce dernier s’effondre, foudroyé par une insuffisance cardiaque chronique… Très vite, le corps de l’irlandais est transféré à l’hôpital, et est déshabillé. On y découvre avec stupeur un corps meurtri dans sa chair : une chaîne est enroulée autour de sa taille, tandis que d’autres chaînes et cordes sont enroulées autour de ses bras et de ses jambes. Talbot s’imposait durant son vivant d’innombrables sévices corporels, fidèle à son engagement religieux.
Rapidement, la Communauté religieuse fait grand cas de cette découverte… Matt Talbot qui vivait autrefois une vie d’anonyme passe dès lors à la postérité suite à sa mort… Ce dernier est enterré au cimetière de Glasnevin : de nombreuses personnes lui rendent un dernier hommage…
Depuis, Talbot est devenu une figure emblématique de la lutte contre l’alcoolisme auprès des catholiques du monde entier. De nombreux établissements hospitaliers et de cure de désintoxication ont été rebaptisés en son honneur, tout comme un pont au coeur même de Dublin (Le Talbot Memorial Bridge). Le 6 Novembre 1931, Byrne archevêque de Dublin a ouvert une enquête sous serment sur les revendications alléguées de sainteté de ce travailleur (ancienne station d’accueil). L’enquête officielle sous serment au Vatican, a commencé en 1947. Le 3 octobre 1975 Pape Paul VI a déclaré vénérable Matt Talbot, ce qui est une étape sur la route pour sa canonisation, un processus qui nécessite la preuve d’un miracle physique afin de réussir.
Les restes de Matt Talbot ont été transférés du cimetière de Glasnevin en l’église Notre-Dame de Lourdes sur Sean McDermott Street à Dublin en 1972. Le tombeau possède un épais un panneau de verre par lequel on peut observer le cercueil de Talbot.
Venerable Matt Talbot
Venerable Matt Talbot is considered the patron of men and women struggling with alcoholism.
Matt was born in Dublin, where his father worked on the docks and had a difficult time supporting his family. After a few years of schooling, Matt obtained work as a messenger for some liquor merchants; there he began to drink excessively. For 15 years—until he was almost 30—Matt was an active alcoholic.
One day he decided to take “the pledge” for three months, make a general confession and begin to attend daily Mass. There is evidence that Matt’s first seven years after taking the pledge were especially difficult. Avoiding his former drinking places was hard. He began to pray as intensely as he used to drink. He also tried to pay back people from whom he had borrowed or stolen money while he was drinking.
Most of his life Matt worked as a builder’s laborer. He joined the Secular Franciscan Order and began a life of strict penance; he abstained from meat nine months a year. Matt spent hours every night avidly reading Scripture and the lives of the saints. He prayed the rosary conscientiously. Though his job did not make him rich, Matt contributed generously to the missions.
After 1923 his health failed and Matt was forced to quit work. He died on his way to church on Trinity Sunday. Fifty years later Pope Paul VI gave him the title venerable.
Matt Talbot was born on the 2nd May 1856 at 13, Aldborough Court in the Parish of St. Agatha. Matt was one of Dublin's poor he lived in a tenement, wore second hand cloths, died in a laneway and was buried in a pauper's grave. Coming from such a deprived background and with an alcoholic father and a family history of neglect and poverty, Matt found himself sucked into the culture of addiction and to the only choice of drug available to the poor of his day alcohol. Matt like so many others embraced alcohol as a means of escape from the misery and poverty of daily life. Today we live in an age of addictions more sophisticated perhaps than those of Matt's day, addictions to substances such as alcohol and other drugs soft or hard, prescription or illegal, addictions to gambling, pornography and the internet, addictions to work, professional advancement, sex, money and power. All these have the ability to destroy our lives and like demons even our very souls as well.
Matt Talbot gradually came to this awareness and from the time of his conversion as a young man of 28, he spent the rest of his life living to a heroic extent the Christian virtues through prayer, spiritual reading, work and acts of charity. Matt sets before us a radical example which demonstrates that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. His life is a witness to the fact that people can by God's grace and their own self acceptance say no to that which leads to addiction or addictive behaviors.
SOURCE : http://www.matttalbot.ie/index.htm
The Venerable Matt Talbot (1856-1925)
1856
Matt Talbot was born on 2nd May to Elizabeth and Charles Talbot at Alderborough Court, North Strand. He was baptised in the Pro-Cathedral, on 5th May.
1868
Having attended school for only one year, Matt got his first job. At this time he began to drink and later admitted that from his early teens to his late twenties his only aim in life was heavy drinking.
1884
Matt stopped drinking and made an initial three month pledge to God not to drink. Despite great temptation in the early stages he never took a drink again.
1884-1925
His remaining forty-one 'dry' years, were lived heroically, attending daily Mass, praying constantly, helping the poor and living the ascetic life-style of Celtic spirituality. This life was his prayer to God and his defence against a reversion to alcoholism.
1925 +
Matt died in Granby Lane on Trinity Sunday, 7th June on his way to Mass in Dominick Street. The chains found on his body at death were a symbol of his devotion to Mary, to whom he wished to devote himself as a slave.
Within a short time of his death, Matt's reputation as a saintly man and especially as a protector of those suffering from all forms of addiction and their families was being established.
Matt Talbot was declared Venerable in 1973 which means the Church has decided that from a human point of view he has the qualifications of a Saint.
2006
Timothy Schmalz, a Canadian sculptor, donated this memorial to the Pro-Cathedral on the 150th anniversary of Matt's birth and baptism.
Prayer for the Canonisation of Venerable Matt Talbot
Lord, in your servant, Matt Talbot
you have given us a wonderful example
of triumph over addiction, of devotion to duty,
and of lifelong reverence for the Most Holy Sacrament.
May his life of prayer and penance
give us courage to take up our crosses
and follow in the footsteps
of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Father,
if it be your will that your beloved servant
should be glorified by your Church,
make known by your heavenly favours
the power he enjoys in your sight.
We ask this through the same
Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
Favours received through the intercession of the Venerable Matt Talbot should be notified as soon as possible to the Vice Postulator:
Very Reverend Brian Lawless, Adm
Parish of St. Agatha,
North William Street,
Dublin 1.
June 19
Venerable Matt Talbot
(1856-1925)
Matt can be considered the patron of men and women struggling with alcoholism.
Matt was born in Dublin, where his father worked on the docks and had a difficult time supporting his family. After a few years of schooling, Matt obtained work as a messenger for some liquor merchants; there he began to drink excessively. For 15 years—until he was almost 30—Matt was an active alcoholic.
One day he decided to take "the pledge" for three months, make a general confession and begin to attend daily Mass. There is evidence that Matt’s first seven years after taking the pledge were especially difficult. Avoiding his former drinking places was hard. He began to pray as intensely as he used to drink. He also tried to pay back people from whom he had borrowed or stolen money while he was drinking.
Most of his life Matt worked as a builder’s laborer. He joined the Secular Franciscan Order and began a life of strict penance; he abstained from meat nine months a year. Matt spent hours every night avidly reading Scripture and the lives of the saints. He prayed the rosary conscientiously. Though his job did not make him rich, Matt contributed generously to the missions.
After 1923 his health failed, and Matt was forced to quit work. He died on his way to church on Trinity Sunday. Fifty years later Pope Paul VI gave him the title venerable.
Comment :
In looking at the life of Matt Talbot, we may easily focus on the later years when he had stopped drinking for some time and was leading a penitential life. Only alcoholic men and women who have stopped drinking can fully appreciate how difficult the earliest years of sobriety were for Matt.
He had to take one day at a time. So do the rest of us.
Quote :
On an otherwise blank page in one of Matt’s books, the following is written: "God console thee and make thee a saint. To arrive at the perfection of humility four things are necessary: to despise the world, to despise no one, to despise self, to despise being despised by others."
Patron Saint of :
Alcoholics
Sobriety
Venerable Matt Talbot
Feast day: June 19
(Patron of Struggling and Recovering Addicts and Alcoholics)
Matthew Talbot (1856 - 1925) was born in the poverty of Dublin's inner city. He took to drink when still a child, and was considered a hopeless alcoholic by age thirteen. When his wages were spent, he borrowed and scrounged for money. He pawned his clothes and boots to get money for alcohol. He became a thief, once even stealing the violin from a blind street entertainer. The violin was sold to pay for a "Drinks are on me!" pub bill. Sixteen years later at age 28, he decided to "kick the habit". His remaining forty-one dry years were lived heroically, attending daily Mass, praying constantly, helping the poor and living the ascetic life-style of Celtic spirituality. A Jesuit priest helped him, giving him a rehabilitation program, which providentially incorporated what was to become the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not really surprising when one remembers that a Jesuit Father, Father Edward Dowling helped A.A. to formulate this program in 1935. The steps have basis in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits. The priest also gave him a chain to wear wrapped around his waist beneath his clothing. It was a very light but somewhat long chain, much like a clock chain. He wore it as a self-reminder of the fact that he was once enslaved by alcohol, and of his pledge to the Sacred Heart to keep on fighting "the demon". Matt also became a Third Order Franciscan in 1890. "Never be too hard on the man who can't give up drink." He told his sister. "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 worked in the lumber yards on the docks of Dublin. He was always very poor, partly because he was so generous to people in need. To his neighbors and his fellow workers, he was a cheerful, happy friend. He gave away most of his wages every week to the poor at home and in the Catholic missions abroad. He lived a life of prayer, fasting, and service, trying to model himself on the sixth century Irish Monks. He read Scripture, lives of saints, and -considering his meager schooling- an astounding assortment of books: The Confessions of St. Augustine; writings of St. Francis de Sales, St. Teresa of Avila, and Blessed John Cardinal Newman; papal encyclicals, world history, and social policy. Word by word, he deciphered what they said. What he couldn't understand, Matt laboriously copied onto scraps of paper, and then handed it to a sometimes astonished priest for explanation the next time he went to Confession.
After a life of heroic perseverance, Matt died suddenly while walking to Mass, June 7, 1925. Venerable Matt Talbot's remains were moved to Our Lady of Lourdes church on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin, Ireland in 1972. The tomb has glass panels through which the coffin may be seen. He was declared Venerable by Pope Paul VI in 1975. Addiction treatment programs, retreats, and centers throughout the world now bear his name.
Saint's Prayer
Gentle Matt, I turn to you in my present needs and ask for the help of your prayers. Trusting in you, I am confident your charitable and understanding heart will make my petitions your own. I believe that you are truly powerful in the presence of Divine Mercy. If it be for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the honor of Mary, our Mother and Queen and the deepening of my relationship with them, show that your goodness towards me, in my daily struggles, equals your influence with the Holy Spirit, who is hidden and at home in my Heart. Friend of pity, friend of power, hear, oh hear me in this hour. Gentle Matt, please pray for me. Amen
SOURCE :
Venerable Matt Talbot
Profile
Born to a poor family with a history of alcoholism, he took to drink when still a child, and was considered a hopeless alcoholic by age thirteen. At age 28, he had conversion experience, and on his knees, he made a pledge of sobriety; he lived another 41 years without ever breaking that vow.
He was a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, and worked in a lumber yard on the docks of Dublin. He was always poor and never cared, yet was always generous to people in need. He lived a life of prayer, fasting, and service, never taking credit, and trying to model himself on the sixth century Irish monks.
Even as his Cause is being investigated, some consider him a modern patron of alcoholics and other adicts. There are a number of Matt Talbot houses, inns, centers, etc. around the English speaking world, working to rescue and treat them.
Born
2 May 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died
7 June 1925 in Dublin, Ireland of natural causes
Venerated
3 October 1975
Beatified
pending; if you have information relevant to the beatification of Venerable Matt, contact:
Vice-Postulation
Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral
83 Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, IRELAND
(...)
Readings
It is a constancy God wants.
-Venerable Matt Talbot
SOURCE : http://saints.sqpn.com/saintm8j.htm
