It is said that once Mother Teresa of Calcutta went to visit the community of her sisters who worked in Australia. Those sisters worked with the local aborigines. Mother Teresa wanted to visit the aboriginal communities. In one of those communities, she found a man who lived completely isolated. No one visited him, and no one paid him any attention. He was literally isolated from everyone, so much so that not even the sisters who cared for the aborigines had noticed this man’s presence. They thought that the house was an abandoned dwelling with no inhabitants, but by one of those acts of God’s Providence, Mother Teresa saw that there was someone there and wanted to visit him.
When she entered his house, she saw that it was a disaster. Everything was dirty and messy. Mother said to him: “Please, would you allow me to clean your house, wash your clothes, and make your bed?” “I’m fine like this,” said the man. “It’s not necessary, don’t worry.” Mother Teresa insisted until the man finally agreed to her request.
Mother began by making his bed, then washed his clothes, and cleaned the house. While Mother was cleaning the house, she found a lamp, completely covered in dust, thrown in a corner. It looked like it hadn’t been used for years. She asked him: “You don’t light your lamp? You don’t usually use it?” “No,” the man replied, “I never light it. No one comes to visit me. I don’t need light. There’s no point in lighting it if no one comes.” Then Mother asked him: “Would you light it every night if a sister came to visit you?” And the man answered: “Yes, of course, if someone comes to visit me, I will light it.” From that day on, Mother asked the sisters to visit him every night. Two years later, a sister conveyed a message from him to Mother Teresa: “Tell my friend that the light she lit in my life is still shining.”
There is a talent that we all have. There is a talent that God has given to everyone in this life, and it is the talent of doing good to others. It may be that God has not given us five talents or even two talents, but certainly God has given each and every one of us one talent: the talent of doing good to others, of lighting a lamp in the lives of others.
It is up to each one of us to make it bear fruit, whether much or little. God doesn’t even ask us to make it bear abundant fruit, rather, He asks us to make it yield only the interest—He is satisfied with that: Why then did you not put my money in the bank, so that on my return I could have collected it with interest?
That is to say, Jesus says that the master did not demand that the man who had been given one talent double it, as the others’ talents had yielded, meaning, making the talent produce interest is enough to go to heaven. What is the interest? It is the very minimum we can do for others: to do them good and never to do them harm. This is precisely our mission in this life.