The feast of August 15 is therefore, at its heart, a feast about who Jesus is. Mary cannot be honored rightly without Christ remaining at the center. Scripture gives us a portrait of Mary that is both more prominent and more restrained than popular piety has sometimes recognized.
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 does not show us a different Jesus. It reveals the glory of the same Jesus the disciples had been following all along. The King in his beauty is the same King who will wear a crown of thorns. The Cross does not contradict his glory.
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.
The calling already contained the cup. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” beside the Sea of Galilee, he was not offering James a safe career. He was calling James into his own path. The boat, the Transfiguration, Gethsemane, the correction, the service, and Herod’s sword belong to one discipleship.
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.