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It’s early morning as I write.

As I mentioned yesterday I’m on retreat this week with a great group of fifty priests,in the Arizona desert. The days are hot and desert dry, but the early mornings at sunrise are cool, the perfect time for a stroll and a prayer.

A couple of times this week I’ve been asked by this mostly American group about the relationship between New Zealand and Australia, friendship or rivalry?

I’ve responded with the Muldoon IQ comment then mentioned that cricket game before quickly adding that our greatest unity and lasting bond came in living and dying together in the European conflicts of last century.

A few years ago I was on Rēkohu Chatham Islands (where I served as parish priest) for what has become one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most sacred days –  the ANZAC day of remembrance in gratitude for those who gave their lives, their health, their youth, their service that we may live in peace.

The art above was produced by one of the students at the local Te One school.

For the 600 people for whom the small island of Rēkohu is home, Anzac day is a moment when heaven meets earth in the silence, the remembering, the prayer and the hope.

This is the atmosphere across Aotearoa and Australia on this holy day.

Such days of remembrance provide a bridge between our world and eternity, between earth and heaven, between God and humanity. We sense this in the gathering in silence, the communal presence and the solemn ritual.

It is significant that the most sacred hour across Aotearoa each year are the dawn gatherings of Anzac Day. Gathering in darkness the people are silent as the unchanged and solemn ritual accompanies the emergence of the light with the rising of the sun.

God is present.

Then comes the social gathering, a traditional, simple and robust army breakfast.

God is present.

I was happy to see that the gospel reading for today’s Mass has Jesus inviting his friends not to an obscure or distant goal but to breakfast.

Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’  John 21

We have a couple of days remaining in our Easter Retreat-in-daily-life. You may feel as though haven’t got started yet or that Jesus has not made himself known to you in these days.

No problem.

Perhaps today’s public holiday gives you an opportunity to notice what he has been doing – most probably in the ordinary breakfast-like daily routines and unspectacular moments.

Set a couple of periods of five minutes or so each during the day. Be still and silent. Breathe deeply. Remember that Jesus appearing to His disciples after the resurrection was not their work or their discovery but His.

Ask Him to make himself known to you today.

And in every encounter and experience, especially the usually unspectacular patterns of the day, seek Him.

Seek Him.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 
Psalm 113
Below: Arizona sunset last night