Matt never escaped those slums, never married, had only a small circle of friends and his family, and spent a good portion of his life addicted to alcohol. But, what God had started in Matt's life through his Baptism, God was able to finish. In 1975, after due process, Pope Paul the VI, who had once prayed quietly at Matt's grave, officially declared him "Venerable," one of the steps on the path to being officially declared a saint.
Matt was barely literate, and working full-time as an unskilled laborer by the age of eleven. He was a hod man, carrying bricks and mortar to the brick layers. The work was hard, the conditions were harsh, the bosses even harsher. Matt followed the example of many of his fellow workers, and escaped his hard life by hanging out in the city's public houses. By his teens, he was still a hard worker but also a hopeless alcoholic, working mainly to finance his drinking habit. In drinking heavily, he was falling into the family's pattern: his father and all of his brothers but one were heavy drinkers.
When Matt drank, he became hot-tempered and got into arguments and fights. He sold many of his possessions and even stole from others to have the money to buy drinks or to buy tobacco, since he also smoked heavily.
All of this changed amazingly one Summer's day in 1884. A twenty-eight year old Matt had no money to buy drinks at the public house. None of his friends would give him the cash he so desperately desired; they simply walked past him, ignoring him. Disconsolate and sober for the first time in a long time, he walked home and told his startled mother that he was going to the seminary to "take the pledge" to give up alcohol. His mother told him that making a pledge to God was a serious matter, not to be taken lightly. Matt understood her. Through the grace of his Baptism, he was experiencing a "conversion."
"Con-vertere" means "to turn around." Matt had decided to seriously turn his life around by turning away from alcohol and the public houses and that whole culture and climate that had been the center of his life before. His new center would be Christ; he'd discovered that God is what is Real and Good and Beautiful and Joyful. The day he "took the pledge," he also went to Confession.
Newly inspired by God, Matt realized that he had to develop a new schedule and lifestyle, one that would remove him from the temptations of alcohol and the friends who tempted him. Every morning after he took the pledge, he would attend a 5 AM Mass before going to work. Every moment of every break, he found a quiet, deserted corner and prayed. After work, while his former friends went on to the public houses, Matt went to Church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, sometimes convincing some other friends to join him. Now he lived "in God," surrounded by God.
Fr. Richard Rohr explains about the transformation of life that occurs in a conversion experience:
"Before conversion, you tend to think of God as almost entirely 'out there.' After transformation you don't look out at reality as if it is hidden in the distance. You look out from reality! You're in the middle of it now. You're a part of it. Your life is participating in God's Life....You're not writing the story; you're a character inside of a story that is already being written through you. St. Paul's code word for consciously living within this reality, used numerous times throughout all his letters, is 'in Christ,' or living inside the Christ Mystery."
Living in Christ, Matt was transformed into a new person: kind, humorous, and even-tempered. He paid back his debts and gave money to the Missions. He also gave up smoking. He abstained from meat several months of the year. Every day he read from Scripture and prayed the rosary, in addition to attending Mass. He told others "Three things I cannot escape: the eye of God, the voice of conscience, the stroke of death. In company, guard your tongue. In your family, guard your temper. When alone, guard your thoughts." Anyone who has struggled with alcohol or drugs understands how difficult sobriety is; Matt had to live life one day, even one minute, at a time, guarding his thoughts and actions so he would not relapse.
After his death in 1925, a trunk full of books was found in Matt's room. The semi-literate Matt had taught himself to read, and read lives of the saints and difficult works of Theology by great mystics like St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman. When asked how he could possibly understand them, he replied simply "I ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten me." That trunk and those books are now in the possession of the Archdiocese of Dublin.
Matt, who lived converted to life with the Blessed Trinity, died on Trinity Sunday while walking to Mass. Fittingly, he was buried on Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
God calls all of us over and over again to new conversions, a new turning our lives around, new and deeper realizations that our Real life is participating in God's Life. All of us need to be converted to realizing that we are not writing the story of our lives - we're characters inside of a story that is being written through us by God. God started our new spiritual lives when we were baptized into Christ. Every moment of every day, He is acting to bring that life story of ours to a wonderful, grace-filled finish! Like Matt we can ask ourselves every day, are there unhealthy habits we need to break? Are we spending our time wisely? Do we spend enough time with God, asking God to strengthen and guide us? Do we realize that God is what is Real?
Matt Talbot is the Patron saint of alcoholics, and I would suggest of drug addicts as well. Today our country is enduring an epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse, overdoses, and deaths, especially among our young people. Share Matt's story with others, and pray to him to watch over those who have the same struggle he did, and need to find that God Alone is Real, as he did.