Thought for Holy Monday

"Baptism, like the Incarnation and the death of Christ, is a real action of God who recreates.  The fact of Christ includes the fact of the Church.  This is not a novel speculation added to the original gospel: it springs from the gospel. The gospel record is unintelligible apart from the Messiah's death, and that death is spiritually unintelligible unless the disciples share in it. For by sharing in it through baptism of the Spirit they and all believers know the death and resurrection as a present reality." 

- Archbishop Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church