Holy Cross Day brings the Church back to the center of the Christian faith in the middle of the long green season. The Cross does not belong only to Lent or Good Friday. It stands over the entire Christian life because the Crucified One stands at the center of our redemption.
Bartholomew reminds us that obscurity before the world is not obscurity before Christ. If the traditional identification with Nathanael is correct, his story begins precisely with this discovery. Before Philip speaks to him, Jesus sees him.
The Church can therefore honor Mary without hesitation and without excess. We call her blessed because Scripture calls her blessed, and with Mary we magnify the Lord who has done great things for her and, through her Son, has done great things for us.
The Transfiguration therefore gives the Church something she needs in every season: not an escape from ordinary life, but a clearer sight of the Lord who stands at its center. The green weeks continue, the Church descends again into ordinary discipleship, and the world remains disquieted.
James’s life gives the Collect a particularly sharp edge. The man associated in Matthew 20 with the desire for a place beside the throne is remembered liturgically as a model through whom the Church learns that authority becomes true authority only when it is shaped by self-denying service.
The connection with John 20 is especially fitting because Mary encounters the risen Jesus in a garden on the first day of the week. The Christ who was dead now lives with a life death cannot end. Mary therefore carries more than information about an empty tomb. She announces the risen Lord himself.