Can We Live "upright In Heart"?

Friday after Epiphany 2026

Our prayer today began with a verse from Psalm 112: “a light has risen in the darkness for the upright of heart; the Lord is generous, merciful and just.” By the grace of God, entering our hearts through the gift of faith, it is possible to live uprightly in our world. We won’t be sinless, for original sin has weakened both our minds and our wills, but God enables us if we cooperate to avoid deadly sins. We can look to saints like Theresa of Lisieux as our forebears in that effort.

To better understand the passage given us from the first letter of the apostle John, let’s consider and picture the most critical day of John’s life. That day culminated with him taking Mary, the mother of Jesus, with him up Golgotha, to the horrible place of execution where Jesus was being murdered by the Romans. (Really, of course, all human beings, by our sin, were complicit in that violent act of injustice.) John heard His master address Mary, “Woman, behold your son.” Then John was the addressee, “Behold your Mother.” The fathers of the Church read this proclamation as Jesus making all the faithful disciples to be children of the Woman who was associated with Jesus in all His life and ministry. Then, moments later, Jesus cried, “I thirst,” and took the cheap, vinegary wine of the soldiers to complete His final Passover. Having done that, John later wrote, He said “it is finished” and He “handed over His spirit.”

The fathers also see this as the birthing of the Church in the pain of Christ’s passion.

John, reflecting repeatedly on the Calvary scene, probably remembered the centurion at the moment of Christ’s death saying, “truly this was the Son of God,” as we see in St. Mark’s account. He tells us, in the light of Christ’s resurrection on the third day, “who is the victor over the world? The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” We cannot forget that John, being there on Calvary with Mary and the other women, saw the Roman soldier pierce the heart of Jesus with a spear or sword, and probably saw and felt the water and blood gush from the wound.

He tells us that now, as on Calvary, there are three witnesses, the Spirit Jesus breathed on us, the water, and the blood. John was also present three years earlier at the Jordan River when his other mentor, John the Baptist, poured river water over Jesus and heard the voice of the Father declare Him to be His beloved Son. John was present at both moments, and wrote his letter so we, too, would believe, accept the water of Christ’s Baptism and the blood given under the sign of wine at Eucharist, and know we have eternal life. We sum all that up by saying “I believe in the name of the Son of God, Jesus.”

Our Gospel from Luke tells us that there was a man (pleres lepra) full of leprosy. He had been riddled with the disease and was probably close to dying with it. He saw Jesus, fell on the ground and pleaded, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus willed it, stretched out His hand to touch the man, and the man was made clean. The Greek adverb is “eutheos,” which means very quickly. That means the human tissues that had been affected by the disease healed at once. I can’t imagine what biochemistry that involved, but it must have been complex, more than the banishing of the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Skin, nerves, mucous membranes were all involved in the cure. It was a true miracle of the Lord.

Jesus commanded the man to go and show himself to the priests in the Temple, offering the sacrifice required for the rare leper who was healed. He also told him not to broadcast the healing. We don’t know if the man ever got around to going up to Temple, and we do know that he told everyone about the miracle.

But suppose we trip ourselves up and fail to avoid deadly sins? The Church has from the beginning used this and other such stories from Her tradition and Scripture to remind us that we, all of us, fall into spiritual leprosy every time we follow our passions instead of God’s law, listen to our selfish wants instead of God’s loving will. The story reminds us that Jesus does will to heal us if we tell Him of our repentance and need for forgiveness and healing. He doesn’t want any of us to die in our sin. Turn to Him. Blessed be His holy Name.