Still Point

A Homily for the Exaltation of the Cross 2025

The spiritual writer, Jacques Philippe, asks a question that I believe is worth our pondering this morning. He writes: “To what degree can evil in my surroundings affect me?” And, simply put, his answer is: “Only to the point I allow it to penetrate my heart.”

We each have something, at the center of our being, at the heart of who we are that cannot be touched by the brutalities of our world or the illusions of our culture; it cannot be taken from us; even if someone were to take our life. And we don’t get to argue with God about whether or not we have it. It’s been given. Without it neither you nor I would exist. It simply is. Our task is to cultivate it, learn to live in it and out of it and then we can address the problems, the struggles, the pain of the world as healers rather than add to the general crush as blind accomplices.

The motto of the Carthusian Order really captures this succinctly: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.” “The Cross is standing while the world is turning.” The Cross is the Still Point of our lives, of our world, of our universe. of the cosmos. The Cross stands fast, is steadfast, is unmoved. It is the Still Point of our very existence.

Pope Francis once spoke the following words into the dark, dank, damp night of isolation and fear that was the Covid 19 pandemic: “We have an anchor; by his cross we are saved. We have a rudder; by his cross we have been redeemed. We have a hope; by his cross we have been healed.” The Cross in all its crude cruelty as a weapon of torture and death, is “unweaponized” into the definitive act of God’s Love by which we are saved. There is no human power or system, politics or ideology that can change that. And we, you and I, have that Still Point, the Cross at the heart of who we are… an anchor in this time of uncertainty, a rudder in this time of disorientation, a hope at a time when despair is too easily at hand.

In the stillness is the dancing. In the chaos is our demise. We need to choose. Will I cultivate the Still Point, my awareness of the God-given Still Point in me, the Cross, my anchor, my rudder, my only hope? And then live, give, and heal the world from that place? As a dancer moves in harmony with the deep rhythm of his or her heart? Or will I let the evil of this world penetrate, disrupt and diminish that Still Point in me? And thereby lash out in such a way that I actually add to the pain that I would wish to heal? In the stillness is the dancing. In the chaos is our demise. We need to choose.

Jesus tells us again today, God’s love has transformed the most gruesome of human-constructed modes of destruction into the Still Point of our very lives, the anchor of our salvation, the rudder of our redemption, and our only hope. Jesus says: “When I am lifted up then you will know I Am.” In the Still Point at the heart of you and I, is the Cross by which we know God and are known by God and called to give and live and heal this impossibly chaotic, spinning, churning, always evolving, sometimes devolving world.

But we need to choose. Will my life reveal the Cross as Still Point, anchor, rudder, & hope or will my life reveal the Cross as weapon? Solely a crude human construction built for destruction? Will I learn to dance or will I submit to the chaos?

Let me conclude in words not my own, but that of a poet who can say it better than I:

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is. But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity. Where past and present are gathered. Neither movement from nor toward, neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance. And there is only the dance.” (T.S. Eliot)

Amen!