What was the cross Jesus Christ is baptism for us.

March 22
What should be the motto of a Christian? Let them tell 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 do not you remember you all we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Therefore, in the words of St. Paul, baptism, through which we become children of God and heirs of the kingdom, is model, participation and copies of the death of Christ. Baptism is a model of Christ's death, for, as Jesus through the cross has suffered in the same way to us with the sign of the cross, we are given baptism as Jesus was buried in the earth, just as we are immersed in the waters of holy baptism.
Baptism is also a participation in the death of Jesus, because baptism represents the mysteries applied and therefore has the effect of the death of our Redeemer. The death of Christ is applied to us in our baptism just as if it were our own and we we were crucified with him, and it is by virtue of this death that removes us are all sins, both as to guilt, as punishment.
Finally, it has been 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 imitate the death of our Redeemer. So what was the cross for Jesus Christ, it is baptism for us. Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross to die after 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 must lead by baptism mortification of Jesus in all our members, that is precisely what St. Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians: "We always our bodies in the sufferings of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. "
(September 19, 1914, to Raffaelina Cerase - Ep. II, p. 174)