Patrick McPartland/Staff Photographer - John Michael Talbot performs at Our Lady of Sacred Heart Parish, Orchard Park, on Nov. 7, 2011. Talbot is a singer-songwriter-guitarist who is founder of a monastic community, the Brothers and Sisters of Charity.
GMA Dove-winning musician John Michael Talbot swept through the Diocese of Buffalo in November holding multi-day missions with song, testimony and prayer. Talbot, who released his latest CD, “Worship and Bow Down,” in June, visited parishes in Niagara Falls, Olean, Orchard Park and Albion within the first two weeks of the month.
He has been on the road for months offering words of hope and joy to places that he calls “economically discouraging.”
“When the recession hit the United States we began to see a real spirit of discouragement in Catholics all across the United States because of finances, because of politics and because of the scandals in the Church. We said we’re going to go out and start bringing some hope,” Talbot explained, via a phone interview in the middle of his Western New York trek. “So we started doing these one- to three-day missions.”
The evenings include singing, testimony and some motivational speaking from Talbot, “which is very upbeat and, you know, filled with humor and hopefully some deep insights into the faith,” Talbot said. There is a time of prayer and meditation with music and song. The evenings end with a call for all to commit their lives more deeply to Christ and life in the Church.
“I tell them they can laugh, they can cry and everything in between,” he said.
Talbot began holding these missions three years ago, veering away from a typical concert performance. Through crossing America he has found Los Angeles and New York to be the most depressed areas in the country. He liked being able to bring his message to the people of Western New York, who have been hit hard economically and spiritually with the reorganization of parishes.
“What we’re discovering is, a lot of times we’ll walk into these parishes and people are kind of down in the dumps. They’re trying to be upbeat, but their down in the dumps. By the end of the two, three days that we’re there, folks are feeling excited about their faith again,” Talbot said. “As I say, in the face of the recession, we try to bring a wealth that is eternal, that doesn’t rise and fall with the economy. With politics people don’t know whether to drink coffee or tea, so we’re preaching the living water of the Spirit of God. And with the sex scandal we say, ‘Look, popes, clergy, religious, even the parish council comes and goes, but Jesus is the thing yesterday, today and forever. So if you focus on Christ, He can enable us to meet any challenge. If we get our eyes off Christ, then we’re going to start sinking in the waves just like St. Peter did when he started worrying about the waves more than following Christ.”
He sees that the people in his audience struggle in these difficult times, but he also sees them respond to his message. “You can tell they’re under a bit of a cloud of discouragement for various reasons, but they are responding very, very well. I won’t tell you they are responding as well as people in other parts of the country, because they are in a deeper hole emotionally than what seems to be the case in other parts of the country,” Talbot said.
Talbot has been living as a married monastic in The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, a community he founded in 1982. Based out of Eureka Springs, Ark., the monastery has 40 members and the community has 500 domestic members, including celibates, single people, married couples and families. His latest book, “The Blessings of St. Benedict,” takes a 1,600-year-old rule and tries to apply it to contemporary Catholic life, not just for monks, but for “people who are, as it were, monks in their hearts.”
“I try to do short little pithy meditations on each chapter of the rule of Benedict,” he said.
“It was beautiful. Very inspiring,” said Lyn Blackburn, a parishioner of Holy Family Parish in Albion. “He talked about the history of his ministry. The basis was our personal history with Jesus and how we receive a sense of joy by responding to that relationship. And he sprinkled in a great deal of humor.”
Blackburn had seen Talbot at the parish two years ago. The moving experience drew her back for more. “His message is most inspiring and the music is outstandingly beautiful,” she said.
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