Christian singer and songwriter John Michael Talbot. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Little Portion Hermitage and Monastery
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 3, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
At 70 years old, John Michael Talbot has been making Christian music for more than four decades. He has achieved remarkable success, producing dozens of albums that have earned him numerous awards and made him one of the most recognizable names in the Christian music scene.
Yet, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, Talbot said that after undergoing a near-death experience in 2017, he now considers all that to be “so much straw.”
“Everything on earth is just practice compared to where we’re all going, which is heaven. It’s all practice,” Talbot said. “I’ve known this all in my life. I’ve known it. But this experience just overwhelmed me.”
Talbot has been making music since he dropped out of high school at age 15, achieving early success with a folk-rock band called Mason Proffit.
In 1978 he converted to Catholicism and gave up his promising career in the secular music industry to devote himself entirely to creating Christian music. Since then he has produced several hit worship songs, established Little Portion Hermitage, and founded a Catholic association of the faithful called the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, which operates under the authority of the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas.
In an interview with CNA, Talbot said that while he was suffering from heart-related issues and spending what he thought would be his final days on earth in a hospital in Houston, he believes God “let me get a glimpse of paradise.”
“In a flash all at once I intuited all of my sins and all of God’s mercy, and all I could do was weep. And it was tears of sorrow and tears of joy all at once,” he said. “They brought me back to my hospital bed. All I could do was weep.”
Talbot said that he was so moved by this experience that for years he would begin weeping uncontrollably any time he prayed or even just thought of Jesus or the saints. Even now, Talbot said that he “can barely keep his composure” during Mass.
“To this day I’m wrapped up in the Eucharist,” he said. “That what happened 2,000 years ago is sacramentally brought into the now in every Eucharist, Jesus shedding his blood on a cross for me, personally … I understood it intellectually, I understood it emotionally, and even spiritually, to some degree, but I didn’t understand it in such a way that it just flattened me out.”
He has since healed from the ailments that had hospitalized him in 2017 but he has been processing his near-death experience ever since.
For his latest album, titled “Late Have I Loved You” after St. Augustine of Hippo’s proclamation to God in “Confessions,” Talbot said he wanted to capture some of the true heavenly joy that he experienced and continues to experience at every Mass.
Released earlier this year by Talbot’s label, Troubadour for the Lord Records, the album draws on several elements such as country folk and Catholic chant, creating a sound that feels both medieval and timeless.
The album’s seven songs center on death and heaven, serving as a meditation on God’s peace, love, and mercy.
“I have tasted your bread now I hunger for more, I drink of your spirit, ever thirsts now my soul. You touched me so gently, I long now for more, late have I loved you, O Lord,” he sings in the album’s title song.
Through both the songs’ sound and lyrics, Talbot said he wanted to give listeners a window into heaven as an eternity of worshipping God.
“I wanted to capture maybe just a 30-second of an inch of what I experienced,” he explained. “I tried to capture it on this earth in a meager fashion as much as possible.”
This meditation on death and eternity has become something of a central theme in Talbot’s latest music.
He said that of all the encounters he has had with fans of his music, he has been most moved when people tell him of their loved ones asking to listen to his songs as they pass away.
“Who am I that somebody’s wife or somebody’s husband wants to listen to my music as they pass to Jesus? I just turned to Jell-O. And that still happens when I get those reports that they want to hear ‘Only in God’ or ‘Healer of my Soul’ or ‘Surrender it all to Jesus’ — that blows me away.”
Far from being morbid, Talbot presents death as a welcome to union with God, something that he said he longs for more every day.
In the meantime, however, he aims to follow God’s will for his time left on earth. He has two books in the works — one on the life of St. Bruno titled “From the Garden” and another titled “The Journey East” on Eastern Catholic and Christian spirituality. And though he has no current plans to go on tour or record more music, he remains open to the call.
“If God were to call me to go out and do more, I would do more. But I haven’t heard that call yet,” he said.
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