This short book collects Ratzinger's homilies delivered in the Cathedral of Münster in Advent 1964. In them he approaches to the topic of salvation. At first "the salvation of human beings became a salvation of souls, which also takes place after death. But with this he did not give an answer. For the greatness of the message lies precisely in the fact that the Lord did not speak only of the afterlife or of souls, but addressed the whole human being in his corporeality and in his insertion in history and in the community; and it resides in the fact that he promised the Kingdom of God to the human being who lives corporeally with other human beings in this history".
Then he asks, "What is it to be a Christian? Whoever loves is a Christian. Whoever has love is a Christian. This is the simple answer to the question of the essence of Christianity. The present book is an attempt to formulate anew the question of our being Christians today, and to answer it in a new way.
"A boundary between "before Christ" and "after Christ" is established; it does not cross historical time externally and cannot be drawn on a map, but passes through our heart. When we are selfish and self-centered, we also find ourselves today "before Christ". But in this Advent season we want to ask the Lord to grant us to live, not "before" Christ nor "after" Christ, but truly with Christ and in Christ: with him who is Christ yesterday, today and forever" [Hebrews 13:8].