ST JOHN THE BAPTIST’S WITNESS January 18, 2026

    “Behold the Lamb of God”, cries out St. John the Baptist in the Gospel, when he points out the Redeemer as the sacrificial victim, the “Lamb” who will be offered up in sacrifice at the Passover.

     So these words look forward to Easter, which we celebrate at the time of year when that sacrifice was made for us on Calvary. These words “Behold the Lamb of God” are familiar to us from the ordinary of the Mass, when the celebrant holds up the sacred host before us as an immediate preparation for communion. John continues: “behold Him who takes away the sin of the world.” Here “Sin” in the singular, as opposed to “sins” in the plural, refers to the original sin in which all other sins are founded. It is this original sin of our first parents whose effects we inherited, the stain of which is taken away in our baptism. John identifies Jesus at the very moment of His baptism as the One who will take human sin upon Himself on the cross, just as He has already done symbolically in accepting baptism from John, a sign of repentance for sin which Jesus has never committed. So here Jesus accepts baptism in order to take upon Himself the sin of mankind’s rejection of God which is the meaning of Adam’s fall. 

     The idea of original sin being in us seems strange to many people today. Yet what it means is that there is a basic solidarity in the entire human race. We all share in the sin of Adam. As St. Paul puts it: “In Adam” all men die. We have all been implicated in that original calamity which separated us from our loving Creator. But there is a counterpart to that. For unless we actually share in Adam’s sin, we cannot share in the grace of the Redeemer and in His saving work. For as St. Paul explains, “In Christ” we are all made alive.

So the necessary preliminary to being saved by Christ is being dead in Adam, through sin. Christ becomes man in every way like us except sin, so that we may share in His victory over sin in the same way that we have shared in Adam’s death through sin. Yet there is a wonderful truth that whereas “sin abounded”, St. Paul tells us that “grace abounded even more”. The victory is greater even than the earlier defeat.

     In the Mass, the word “sins” is in the plural to remind us that it is our own personal sins that we are concerned with now. Original Sin has been taken from us at baptism, but we are still left with its consequences in our fallen nature. The distorted love for sin and alienation from God need constantly to be fought against by the power of God’s grace within us. Hence, as well as Baptism which we receive only once, we need the continuing assistance of the Sacraments of daily life: Penance (or confession) and Holy Communion. These help us to drive out the power of sin in proportion to the increase within us of the love of God which they generate.        

With Fr. Rafal, I thank you for your many good wishes,

prayers & gifts throughout the Christmas Season.

                                                      ~  Fr. Paul Dobson.