We circled the helicopter several times to let the grizzly and black bears know that we were dropping by.  Bald eagles emerged from the old-growth cedars to drift away from our approach.  Into the river valley we descended.   The fall-yellowed alder leaves scattered wildly and the approaching river misted our windows.  Ever so gently, the pilot positioned the chopper onto the rocky shores, feeling out a safe and level landing spot.  The earth tested, the chopper eased onto the river bank.

The stench of rotting flesh flushed our nostrils as we opened the doors.  Spawning salmon limped away from our approach.  Large red, rotting salmon lay spent along the sandy banks.  Fresh bear tracks marked the sands.  Red salmon flesh, exposed by the foraging bears, brightened the otherwise drab wet sands. 

As we walked the fleshy, putrid shores, the Coho salmon flapped and swam their last moments.  Spent, bleached salmon bodies draped rocks and logs like limp carpets.  Empty sockets, hooked jaws, protruding teeth, gaunt faces marked our every gaze.  They had done their duty, returning to ancestral streams after years in the Pacific Ocean.  The future was now assured. 

These "salmon forests" have witnessed this annual self-giving for generations – this dying so that others would live.  The future was established, not only for the salmon, but for the bears and eagles – and the forests that scavenged this feast of flesh. 

This cycle of death and dying is known by all creatures, including ourselves.  We may fear it, resist it, not have much sense of it, but that doesn't matter.  It's commonplace and relentless.  It's built into the very fabric of all life on the planet.

It's as if the dying and resurrection of the Christ event is the hidden truth of all creation.   The dying and rising of Jesus Christ was not simply an historic event that marked the foundation of Christianity.  It was that, but it is never a moment in the sense of past and finished.  It's enduring, never-ending.  In a word, it's eternal.  It's of God. 

And because it's of God, the Paschal Mystery speaks of universal, timeless truth – a truth that links heaven and earth, life and death, light and darkness, hope and despair.  As the salmon die only to make way for the future, we too are called to die each and every day so that the world may live. 

Die to yourself, Jesus tells us.  Let the first be last and the last be first.  The Paschal Mystery transcends all matter to enter the heart of the spirit. 

As we prepared to leave this river of life, the spawning salmon, red in anticipation, scurried away in the swift-moving, shallow waters.  We left them to continue their age-old ritual of death and rising.  We have given it a name that is above all other names – the death and rising of Christ Jesus. 

This Mystery knows no bounds.  It moves the salmon as it moves our lives.  Nothing is unaffected by his ancient, abiding mystery that calls all creation to new life.  I have come that you may have life and life to the full, promised our savior Jesus Christ.  New life for all, for the spawning salmon, for you and me, indeed, for all creation.