In my personal interest for all things historical connected to the American Civil War, I recently read a letter written by a soldier from New Jersey, writing back home to friends about his situation at the time. He wrote, “Gettysburg, Pa. In the first line of battle 1 O’Clock P.M. June 2nd.” He actually wrote the wrong month, as it should have been July 2, as the two armies, North and South, fought on that hallowed ground on July 1, 2 and 3, 1863. As an aside, we do hope to have a Monday-Friday bus trip to Gettysburg, PA and one or two other places (Washington, D.C., Harper’s Ferry…?) at some point next year, possibly in the springtime (if you’re nice to me).  

Interestingly, this is the 3rd or 4th letter I’ve read from the Civil War period where the soldier wrote down the wrong month. Makes a person wonder if, when they are marching and fighting, and not sitting around in camp for weeks or months at a time, if they lose track of time because of their intense focus on other matters at hand.

Either way, the soldier from New Jersey goes on to write, “Dear Friends, the bullets are flying around me at this moment and not knowing as it may be my last chance of ever writing. I drop you these lines. We have marched 22 days and nights through all kinds of weather, up hill and down, through woods, over dry parched plains entirely destitute of water, through swamps + over streams up to our necks, sometimes with rations and sometimes without, today we are in Pennsylvania fighting the enemy at Gettysburg… Our Brigade is in the center + our regiment in on the left of the Brigade… We are getting ready for a bayonet charge… Thousands of the soldiers are at this moment tearing up their old letters from home and pinning on their breast little slips of paper bearing their names and the place of their homes in the north, so that if they fall they may be identified… But I must quit as the order is sounding to charge bayonets. Good by, God bless you…”  

This incredible letter, written during the middle day of a 3-day battle, and in the midst of a day that was 90 degrees hot while wearing a wool uniform, has many important parts to it. But I zero in on one central aspect of what Lt. John Smith of the 11th New Jersey Volunteers wrote: the anticipation that the upcoming charge could result in this being his last letter home to family and friends due to his obvious concern about his death somewhere on the battlefield at Gettysburg. His honestly about his chances of survival are clear, and his “reality check” leaves no room for any more reality, for his reality concerning what can happen to him the day of July 2, 1863, is at its peak.

Lt. Smith would go on to survive the Battle of Gettysburg while many of his fellow soldiers in the 11th New Jersey would not. Instead of going on the offensive against the Confederate army with a bayonet charge on that day, the tables would be turned on the Union army when the Confederates would charge from their side, and pretty much bowl over Lt. Smith’s regiment, as well as many other Union regiments who happened to be in their path, at least in that section of the battlefield. His anticipation of dying that day would result in his living, and he would survive the war. But the reality-check he refers to in his letter could not have been more forthright and proper given the circumstances. He was fully aware that death, our greatest enemy, was close by with a list, and his name may well be on it. And for him to write about the real possibly of his demise that day with such clarity of mind tells of a soldier who had been in this situation previously.

In this week’s 2nd reading for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, St. Paul writes to the Christian community at Colossae concerning the same topic as Lt. Smith: anticipation. The anticipation of God wiping away our offenses forever. Or, as St. Paul writes, “Obliterating the bond against us.” As the bond of badness seems to grow wider and wider in a present very confused world, we must never forget that Jesus has won the victory that does away with the bond of badness that tries its best to overtake our lives. His grace is sufficient for us. The Apostle makes it clear, as did Lt. Smith, that the only way our bond of iniquity will one day become the bond of eternal life and love is through the doors of death we all await still. And Jesus our Savior, nailing our iniquity to the Cross he carried, is the one and only way we can arrive safely at the gates of heaven.

I suppose if we’re going to prepare for a bayonet charge in our lives, may it be a charge against our human weakness and faults through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The sacrament is a spiritual charge that will clear a path to the stairway to heaven through our faith, God’s mercy, and abundant good works that flow from our faith in Christ. It serves us well to hold within our hearts the promise of our faith that believes and anticipates God’s perfect peace. We’re not certain Lt. Smith had this level of peace on July 2, 1863, at a small town called Gettysburg since made famous by a battle and a Presidential speech. It sounds like he could have. Either way, we trust and anticipate God’s promise of perfection, obliterating the bond of badness, that comes to all humanity through his Son nailing it to a cross.                 

HOLINESS (The holiness of Christ and the Christian)
“Jesus, as a child of the covenant, was holy in the sense that he was set apart as a member of God’s covenanted people, Israel. Luke makes that clear in his description of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple” ‘They brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘every first born male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’).

Beyond that the New Testament calls Jesus ‘holy’ (he does not so describe himself) in a series of set pieces that involve quasi-public professions of faith. A demonic voice distinguishes its own evil from the otherness of Jesus by crying out, ‘I know who you are - the Holy One of God!’, while Peter, refusing to abandon Jesus despite the defection of many disciples, cries out ‘We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’ That same Peter invokes the psalmist to underscore the resurrection; ‘You will not abandon my soul to the nether world, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.’ Similarly, Peter describes Jesus as God’s ‘holy servant’ who is anointed, so that the notions of holiness and Messiah become conflated in a single phrase. Finally, the holiness of Jesus is communicable to those who follow him, as John's Gospel makes clear: ‘I consecrate (make holy) myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.’

Christians, especially in the Pauline literature, are also called ‘holy.’ Paul addresses the faithful at Rome as those ‘who are called … to be holy,’ while in 2 Corinthians he gives greetings to that congregation and to ‘all the holy ones throughout Achaia.’ greetings to the ‘holy ones’ also head the letters to the Ephesians, the Philippians, and the Colossians. As a general term, the ‘holy ones’ or ‘saints’ are those who are set apart by faith in Christ, as opposed to those who are not believers. In this generic sense the word ‘saint’ or ‘holy one’ denotes inclusion rather than exclusion; it is an extension of the Jewish concept of a people beloved and chosen by God. Only in later Christianity will the term take on the meaning of a person publicly venerated in the Church's liturgy. In the mind of the early Church, however, holiness is the state of those who live within the Trinitarian dynamic by which they are connected to the Father through the Son in the spirit of God, poured out precisely to make us children of God. It is because we possess the Spirit of Christ (in faith, in baptism, in communion, indeed) that we are capable of calling out ‘Abba, Father.’”

From The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality