Matt Talbot and St. Therese - Part 1

In this great Jubilee Year of Hope, we rejoice to be celebrating the centenary of the death of Venerable Matt Talbot. The Carmelite family are also celebrating the centenary of the canonisation of St. Therese on May 17th 2025.

Matt was attracted to the young saint of Lisieux whose message of confidence in God’s merciful love was running like a forest fire around the world. We find her message making an enormous impact on the struggling alcoholic sucking his pebble as he walked the streets of Dublin to ward off his craving for drink and the other terrible withdrawal symptoms he was experiencing.

Matt called Therese “his little brick”! She beckoned him on along his path of conversion. When shame and guilt scorched his mind and heart – her confidence in God’s merciful love was like oil poured into his wounds.

In these 2 young people – 28 year old Matt and 14 year old Therese Martin, is there not something similar in their conversion? Christ’s grace of conversion descended on Matt outside O’Meara’s pub one Saturday in 1884. Ever generous in standing rounds of drinks for the lads, he stood that Saturday morning outside the pub, penniless, craving for a drink while his friends trouped into the pub ignoring him. Stung and hurt by their rejection Matt in his pain is open to the Faithful Friend Jesus. He walks home to his mother and
down to Clonliffe to take the pledge for three months.

The early death of St. Therese’s loving mother left its mark on her sensitive being. She tells us. “God would have to work a little miracle to make me grow up. I was really unbearable because of my extreme touchiness. It was Christmas night 1886 that I received the grace of my complete conversion. The work I had been unable to do in ten years was done by Jesus in one instant, contenting Himself with my good will which was never lacking. He made me a fisher of souls… I felt charity enter my soul and the need to forget myself and please others.”

We see that both of them, Matt and Therese were powerless to help themselves until God’s grace broke “their chains”. The overwhelming power had to come from God – their “Higher Power.” Our chains of fear, anxiety ambition, addiction, can fall off too if only in our need and brokenness we can cry out to our Merciful Father to heal and help us.

Venerable Matt Talbot pray for us.

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