There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names--Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord's Supper. At least, those are the three ordinary methods.

Do not think I am setting up baptism and belief and the Holy Communion as things that will do instead of your own attempts to copy Christ.

In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

They mean that Christ is actually operating through them [...] It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion.

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God.

Mere Christianity -- C. S. Lewis