Nearly every one of his brothers was a drunk. He was uneducated and unskilled, and he died in obscurity. And someday soon, God willing, Venerable Matt Talbot will be a saint.

Talbot (1856-1925) was the second of 12 children born to a working class Dublin family at a time when work and food were scarce and hope scarcer still.

Matt's home life was unstable and his schooling inconsistent. After a few years of sporadic attendance, Matt quit school entirely and entered the workforce.

His first job was for a wine seller, and the occasional taste he took of the merchandise soon turned him into a full-fledged alcoholic. By the time he was 13, Matt's life was driven by his need to drink.

He spent all his wages on alcohol, even pawning his boots when he didn't have enough for a pint. Matt's father beat him and made him change jobs, but it was too late.

The alcohol had taken hold of him and, as his father well knew, it wouldn't let go without a fight.

But Matt didn't want to fight. He wanted to drink. And only to drink.

His friends later said that he "only wanted one thing — the drink; he wouldn't go with us to a dance or a party or a school function. But for the drink he'd do anything."

For 15 years, Matt begged, borrowed, and stole whatever he needed to feed his addiction, once stealing the fiddle from a blind beggar to sell it for liquor.

Matt was a lost cause — so everybody said. But nobody reckoned on grace.

Matt Talbot was the life of the party but, one day, when he was 28, he suddenly saw how false his happiness was, how false his friendships.

He had been out of work for a few days and had drunk all his wages, so he stood outside a pub waiting for one of his many drinking buddies to offer to buy him a drink.

But as one old friend after another passed him by, Talbot began to realize the emptiness of his life. Continue reading

Sources

• Aleteia article by Meg Hunter-Kilmer, who profiles a saint for Aleteia every Thursday
• Image: St Michael's Homes

"Am I too late?" I asked.

"No, Steve's still with us," somebody told me. I looked down at the bed, the monitors, assessing his heart rate and blood pressure. Things I knew about.

Then I looked at my brother and knew the doctor was wrong. The truth was quite different.

In reality my eldest brother, 17 years my senior, had not really been with us in many years. We had been losing him a little bit at a time to a disease we had long held off giving a name.

We didn't know what to call it. Sometimes we thought we knew, other times we felt blind. We held back from labels, organised dinner without wine when it seemed prudent, with wine when things seemed all right.

We were just fumbling about in the dark.

Because what we came to accept in those final years, and what was more obvious than ever as we stood at his bedside, was that what had resulted in his latest, and final admission, had a name. Steve was an alcoholic.

But it wasn't always like that. Alcoholism takes its time, comes and goes as it pleases for years. There was a time, many years before, when my brother pushed me about in my buggy, played at being Dad.

He took me fishing, teased me, and made me hate him by locking me in his room while Michael Jackson's Thriller played on repeat.

Years later, he called me when his cats were giving birth, and looked after me when it was school holidays and my parents were at work. Continue reading

• Michelle Adams is the author of My Sister, published by Headline.