Baptized in Christ

March 22

What should be the motto of a Christian? Let them say the Apostle to the Gentiles: "Do you not know - says the holy apostle, writing to the Romans - that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?", And you do not remember all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?Therefore, in the words of St. Paul, baptism, by which we become children of God and heirs of his kingdom, is a model, participation and a copy of the death of Christ. Baptism is a model of the death of Jesus Christ, because, like Jesus through the cross has suffered in the same way to us with the sign of the cross gives us baptism as Jesus was buried in the earth, just as we are submerged in the waters of holy baptism.Baptism is also involved in the death of Jesus, because baptism is applied to the mysteries and therefore has the effect of the death of our Redeemer. The death of Christ in our baptism applies to us just as if it were our own and we we were crucified with him, and under this death as we are we removed all sins, both as to guilt, as punishment.Finally, it is said that baptism is a copy of the death of Jesus. We, in the words of St. Paul, we are baptized "in morte ipsius" in his death, that is, to mimic the death of our Redeemer. So what was the cross for Jesus Christ, that is baptism for us. Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross to die in the flesh, we are baptized to die to sin, to die to ourselves. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross in all its senses, just as we by baptism we must take the mortification of Jesus in all our members, that is precisely what St. Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians: "We always in our bodies the sufferings of Jesus, so that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. "(September 19, 1914, to Raffaelina Cerase - Letters. II, p. 174)