On 29^th August we celebrate the feast of the Passion of St John the Baptist. The story is well known and often told, but it can overshadow his other feastday, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Baptist on the 24^th of June. Why does he have two: a feastday and a solemnity?

Jesus told us that John was “the greatest man born of woman”, which gives a clue. What was so special about his birth? There is a strong tradition in the Church that he was born immaculate. That has not been defined infallibly by the Church, but it is well attested from ancient times. According to the teaching of the Church Fathers, John was freed from original sin as he leapt for joy in his mother’s womb, when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visited Elizabeth.

What does “immaculate” mean, or “free from Original Sin”? A lot of people get hung up on the word sin, because it usually means a personal act of evil, which breaks or weakens our contact with God. Original Sin is not that; it is the state we inherit form the first human beings who revolted against God. It is characterised by an inability to know God naturally; it is spiritual brokenness.

We get an indication of this in the words of Jesus at the Last Supper speaking about the coming of the Holy Spirit: “He will show the world how wrong it was about sin… about sin in that it did not believe in me” (John 16:8). What he is teaching is that sin is not primarily an action, but a state of not relating to God.

The ancient Fathers of the Church never taught that John was conceived immaculate, but born immaculate. Mary, and Jesus were conceived immaculate. But they and John would have different degrees of closeness to God. If you imagine God to be the sun, John’s experience would have been like the sun peeping above the horizon at dawn; Mary’s would have been like the brightness of noon – Gabriel reverently addressed her as the one “full of grace”. Jesus’ experience would have been like his humanity soaring up into the sun.

All this explains Jesus’ words about John, “no man born of woman is greater than he”. But we are to remember that he followed up that statement with the words “yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he”. Each of us can describe ourself as the least in the Kingdom of heaven. This tallies with the words of a great father of the Church, Pope St Leo the Great: “Oh Christian acknowledge your dignity!”