Dying and Rising

St. Basil the Great on the ending of the old life and the beginning of the new in Christ:

How then are we made in the likeness of His death? In that we were buried with Him by baptism. What then is the manner of the burial? And what is the advantage resulting from the imitation? First of all, it is necessary that the continuity of the old life be cut. And this is impossible less a man be born again, according to the Lord's word; for the regeneration, as indeed the name shews, is a beginning of a second life. So before beginning the second, it is necessary to put an end to the first. For just as in the case of runners who turn and take the second course, a kind of halt and pause intervenes between the movements in the opposite direction, so also inmaking a change in lives it seemed necessary for death to come as mediator between the two, ending all that goes before, and beginning all that comes after.

(On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 15)