Members of the Knights of St Columbanus Michael Murphy, Tommy Kiernan and Brian McCarthy showing the relics of Matt Talbot to Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Paul Dempsey who celebrated the Mass on Sunday November 3, in Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Sean MacDermott St, Dublin. With the centenary of the Venerable Matt Talbot arriving next year, it’s good to recall the kind of man he was. Often we treat saints the way we treat celebrities, isolating them from their background but thereby overlooking the many friends whose encouragement and insight enabled their light to shine.
It would be easy to think of Matt simply as a loner and ascetic but he was much more than that. For those who knew him, such as Paddy Laird, “he was always pleasant company – and enjoyed a laugh”. Mary Manning also shared that, “Matt was always happy; he was cheerful and good-humoured.” He had a ready smile.
He had trustworthy friends who loved him, beginning with his mother who, as confidante and companion, knew him better than anyone. Dr Michael Hickey, perhaps his most important friend and anam cara, who taught in Clonliffe College and was later President, would visit Matt’s flat a couple of times a week where they would have spiritual conversation and sing hymns. He was Matt’s regular confessor for almost thirty years.
There was Bob Laird who worked with Matt and would invite him home for tea. And later, his son Paddy who became one of Matt’s closest friends when he joined the work force in T&C Martin’s timber yards. The fact that Paddy only died in 1985 means that here was someone who could give a knowing and realistic picture of Matt and not an overly pious version. “On our way from work,” he recalled, “he’d join in when we talked about strikes or politics or football matches. He liked to be affable and good company.”
Friendship
Another dear friend was Ted Fuller, who helped Matt an evening as he tried to master the accounting side of the job when Matt was put in charge of costing timber leaving the yard. Ted reports him confiding; “Oh Ted, I don’t know will I be able for this. I’m no good at figures. I’m afraid I won’t be able to make up the bills for the loads” and Ted reassuring him that he’d be working near him and all he had to do in a fix was to give him a shout.
All three of his closest friends who helped shoulder his coffin at the end, Paddy, Ted and John Robbins, could remember Matt sharing with them the constant and strong temptations he had faced in the early months of taking the pledge to abstain from alcohol. He even recalled for them the occasion he stood outside Bushe’s pub on the corner of Upper Gardiner and Dorset Street fingering a few coins before going in. Fortunately, not being known there the barman was slow in coming to him and Matt found the chink of light in himself that caused him to retreat. He came that close to abandoning the pledge that ever afterwards, he told them, he never carried money.
The discovery that he was wearing two chains around his body with a cord round his arm and knee providentially opened a window onto a life given over to God in prayer, fasting and charity”
Ralph O’Callaghan was also there at the end and paid the cost of the funeral expenses. Ironically this key figure in Matt’s later life was a wine merchant with offices on Lower Gardiner Street and stores on Mabbot Lane. They had become great friends, and Matt would visit him regularly in Rathmines to exchange and discuss spiritual books.
In fact it was from Ralph that Matt became aware in the last decade of his life of the book, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by St Louis de Montford, where he learnt of the practice of wearing a small chain to symbolise the surrender of one’s life to Jesus through Mary, a practice which he confided to his friend, John Gunning, “lifted him from Earth to Heaven.”
Later, Matt would take that practice to a different level, the nature of which only became evident when his dead body was being undressed in Jervis St Hospital following his sudden death on the way to Mass in 1925. The discovery that he was wearing two chains around his body with a cord round his arm and knee providentially opened a window onto a life given over to God in prayer, fasting and charity.
When Sir Joseph Glynn’s Short life of Matt appeared early in 1926, the first edition of 10,000 copies sold out in four days. Within a few months, 140,000 copies were in circulation”
There were others too, like Mary Manning with whom he conversed every day. At lunchtime she boiled the water to make his tea and cocoa, or the lady whose dog Matt loved to pat in the porch after Mass. She recalled vivid spiritual conversation with Matt.
Legacy
That the first notice of his death in the Irish Independent on June 8 should read ‘Unknown Man’s Death’ brings a smile given that his story would go viral in no time. When Sir Joseph Glynn’s Short life of Matt appeared early in 1926, the first edition of 10,000 copies sold out in four days. Within a few months, 140,000 copies were in circulation! Twenty years on, the life had been translated into 21 languages!
In 1931, the archbishop Dr Byrne opened a diocesan enquiry into the holiness of Matt’s life. The following year Cardinal Jean Verdier archbishop of Paris took time away from the Eucharistic congress to visit Matt’s room in 18 Upper Rutland Street to spend time there in prayer. Deeply moved by the experience, before departing, he praised the local people for their wonderful faith of which Matt Talbot is a living witness. They too are part of the story.