Dying to Self
Padre Pio’s letter to Raffaelina Cerase, 1914: Baptism is said to be a copy of the death of Jesus. St. Paul says we are baptized “into his death” [Romans 6:3], in imitation of the death of our Redeemer. What the cross was to Jesus, then, baptism is for us. Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross to die in his flesh. We are baptized to die to sin, to die to ourselves. On the cross Jesus Christ had all his senses put to death, so we through baptism should carry the death of Jesus in all our senses. This is precisely what St. Paul says in his second letter to the faithful in Corinth: “[We are] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” [2 Corinthians 4:10].

—from the book Padre Pio’s Spiritual Direction for Every Day by Gianluigi Pasquale and Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Ph.D