His Eyes were as a Flame of Fire (Rev 1:14) – 30th Sunday In Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; October 26, 2025

The Lord is a God of justice. Wait, isn’t he a God of mercy? Aren’t justice and mercy opposed to one another? Not quite.

On the human level mercy presupposes justice and would have little meaning without reference to justice. Pardoning a criminal would be an act of mercy; denying that the criminal had done any wrong would not be an act of mercy; mercy presupposes that the criminal justly deserves to be punished but spares him the punishment.

For the pardon to be a true act of mercy, there needs to be a mutual recognition of justice, both on the part of the criminal and the authority granting the pardon. The criminal has done wrong and is answerable for the wrong he has done; if he is not held to a strict account, that is a merciful concession from the side of authority, so long as the criminal at least acknowledges his wrong. If the criminal does not acknowledge his wrong, then the pardon would no longer be an act of mercy, but an injustice by the authority, letting the criminal get off “scot-free”. By failing to punish, by failing even to extract an admission of wrongdoing and an expression of sorrow and repentance, the authority tacitly approves the crime, committing thereby an injustice. (cf. Rm 1:32)

Now, when we apply our human concepts of justice and mercy to God, they speak of the reality in the highest and most perfect sense. Indeed, in God justice and mercy are not two different qualities, but the same divine reality, understood by us in two different ways, through the lens of justice and through the lens of mercy. As human vision lacks depth if one eye has been blinded, so our understanding of God is crippled and deficient if we view him only through the lens of justice or only through the lens of mercy. God himself wants to be known more for his mercy than for his justice, but we cannot understand his mercy without reference to his justice.

One way to consider God’s justice is to see him as the just judge of human actions, to whom we are all accountable, whose judgment is always right and just. Today’s 1^st reading speak of God this way when it says that he has no favorites but is not unduly impartial toward the weak. The powerful have no pull with him, they cannot corrupt him with bribes. As for the weak, they will not get anywhere with God by playing the “victim card”.

There are three basic ways we can think of God’s judgment.

First, there is the “particular judgment” that we must all face when we depart from this world, go before the judgment seat of Christ, and render an account to him of the life he has given to us. In this regard we might speak of Christ as a “merciful judge” because, while we must render a strict account of our life, he understands perfectly and accounts for all our weakness, all our good intentions, and all the circumstances that mitigate our guilt; while he will not spare the unrepentant sinner, neither is he seeking to condemn us.

Second, there is general judgment or the last judgment, at the end of the world, when the dead are raised and all mankind will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and the judgment will be published to the whole universe.

Third, and more immediately, there is the hidden judgment of God at each moment, which is nothing other than his providence governing the lives of individuals and nations. Here his mercy has its full scope as his hidden judgments work to bring us to repentance and salvation.

Today’s Gospel actually reveals something of the hidden workings of God’s present judgment, for God judges between the Pharisee and the tax-collector. One goes away justified, the other not. The judgment is a judgment of mercy for the tax-collector, who acknowledges his sin before God and receives pardon; the other is a judgment of severity for the Pharisee, who exalts himself in the presence of God, and goes away empty. In both cases it is a judgment of truth, because God sees the heart of both the tax-collector and the Pharisee; nothing is hidden from his gaze.

Conversely, the prayer of the Pharisee is not received by God because it is a mere pretense, not a true prayer; the Pharisee does not truly attempt to place himself before God, but makes only an external show of presenting himself in the temple area, going through the motions; he does not recognize God as the eternal, living judge who searches minds and hearts. (cf. Jer 20:12; Rev 2:23)

The tax-collector, on the other hand, does not merely enter the temple area, he presents himself before God, the judge, in truth and sincerity of heart; the tax-collector presents himself before the One who sees all and knows all, before whom nothing, not even the secrets of the heart are hidden.

Who is the tax-collector in the Gospel? He is the servant of a foreign power who imposes unjust burdens on others. When we impose unjust burdens on others, effectively serving the devil, we are like the tax-collector.

Now, anyone could stand at a distance, bow their head, beat their breast, and say, O God, be merciful to me a sinner, and yet be praying like the Pharisee, making an external show. If the tax-collector goes away justified, this is not because of the mere words and gestures, but because those words and gestures truly expressed what was in his heart. He knows that his sin is seen by God and opposed by God; he recognizes his sin, is ashamed of his sin, and wants to be delivered from his sin. When he begs God for mercy, he is not asking to be forgiven, despite being willing to continue in his sin, rather, he is begging to be delivered from his sin, to have the power to begin a new life, free from sin; he is offering his sinful heart to God that it might be transformed by God’s mercy. Thus, when he goes away justified, he is not the same man as he was when he came into the temple area, for he goes away now with a new heart. The mercy of God  justifies the sinner, transforming him into a righteous man.

This means that the key to prayer begins in recognizing that God is the almighty judge of human hearts; the key to prayer begins in recognizing that we are accountable to God for our free decisions; the key to prayer means learning to present ourselves with confidence before our merciful judge; confidence that if we are truthful before God, from whom we cannot in any case hide, confident that if we present ourselves before his gaze, that very gaze will purify our hearts; confident because we indeed want our hearts to be purified.

The tax-collector, after departing the temple area having been justified, could take on his lips the words of the Psalmist: Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit … I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. (Ps 32[31]:1-2;5)

The state of mortal sin is a state of enmity with God and the death of the soul; the state of sanctifying grace is the state of friendship with God, in which the soul shares in the life and nature of God as a true son or daughter. When God forgives sin, he also gives grace; it is the influx of grace that makes the man who is forgiven also to be blessed.

Jesus said, The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father … [the Father] has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. (Jn 5:22;27) Judgment is a divine work. Only God searches the mind and heart; the authority of judgment is given to the man, Jesus Christ, who as the Son of God possesses divine power together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and who as man is one with those whom he judges. When the soul departs from this world, only the soul that is vindicated in the judgment will be able to see God, as he is in himself; but every soul will see the man Jesus who renders judgment.

Further, judgment will be in relation to Christ, will depend on how we responded to the gift of God’s Son. The One whom we judged, condemned, and crucified, will sit in judgment on us. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, as Jesus says, because they do not believe in me. (Jn 16:8) And, He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. (Jn 12:48) Right after the famous words, God so loved the world he gave his only Son, Jesus adds, this is the judgment, that the light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. (Jn 3:19-20)

The Pharisee, though he outwardly came into the temple area, into the place of God’s presence, refused to come into the light, he hid his heart and boasted of his pretended righteousness. Yet, we are all, by nature, sinners, and so we have the instinct to flee from the light, like Adam and Eve, hiding among the trees of the garden. (cf. Gen 3:8-10)

We are faced with a paradox: we need to come to the light to receive mercy, but we fear to come to the light because we are afraid of having our deeds exposed.

He who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God. (Jn 3:21) The first grace of God gives us the strength to come to the light, to expose our wicked deeds, to confess the truth, to take God’s side against our own sin. That is a deed of truth that is wrought in God. It must first be wrought in our heart, then be brought into the confessional, before the minister of God, so that free of the deceits of our own heart, the objective words of absolution, and I absolve you from your sins, might communicate God’s forgiveness to the soul, and set us in the light.

Yes, the Son of God came into the world not to condemn the world but to save it, but for us to benefit from that salvation, we must believe in him and confess our sins. Then, like the tax collector, we go away justified.

Yet, we are afraid; even though we are not hidden from God, we think it is a scary thing to present ourselves as we truly are even before the eyes of Christ, eyes that the book of Revelation describes as like a flame of fire. (Rev 1:14) We do not want to be burnt; we do not want to be destroyed. We should remember the vision Moses had when God appeared to him in a bush that was burning but not consumed, not destroyed by the fire. (cf. Ex 3:2)

The gaze of Jesus is burning and piercing to the depths of our soul, but the flames are the flames that come forth from his Sacred Heart, the burning furnace of charity. They are not flames that destroy, but flames that purify and heal and give life. The more we submit ourselves to the painful purification, the more we discover the healing and life-giving quality of the divine fire, the more we are transformed into the likeness of the fire, the more we experience not just life, but joy, the joy of God, the true consolation of the Holy Spirit.