This volume brings together in a single text meditations given by Cardinal Martini during two separate retreats based on the Second Letter to Timothy. We are shown the figure of Timothy, Paul's young and very faithful disciple who is carrying out his service as bishop in the Church at Ephesus in a community that is no longer as joyful and conquering as it was at the beginning. It is weary and caught up in a difficult and confused situation.

Martini believes that this is the best choice for reflecting on what it means to evangelise today. He offers a continuous reading of one of the most important of Paul's Pastoral Letters. Cardinal Martini draws out fundamental teachings for today's Church and society from the Apostle's life experience and message: the Christian horizon of meaning, the need to preserve the 'deposit of faith', to proclaim the gospel of the primacy of grace over law, of the essential over the relative, of the mystery of the cross and the Eucharist, the relationship between the Pastoral Letters and 'pastoral work' in our times.