Il volume è il frutto di dialoghi fra l’Autore e due gruppi di giovani che iniziarono un cammino di dedizione a Cristo nei Memores Domini negli anni 1994-1995 e 1995-1996, cammino analogo a quello percorso da altri qualche anno prima, che era rifluito nel volume Si può vivere così? Uno strano approccio all’esistenza cristiana (BUR, 1994), come si legge nell’“Avvertenza” (BUR, 1996, p. 7).
Scrive Savorana che fu l’Autore stesso a indicare la struttura del testo, come revisione completa di quello precedente: «Io ho fatto ancora lo stesso tema: fede, speranza e carità, ma l’esito è stato imprevedibile, cioè quasi cinquecento pagine totalmente diverse» (Alberto Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 970). 
Gli incontri, a cadenza settimanale, erano dedicati alternativamente a lezioni, in cui erano commentati i fondamentali passaggi del testo già pubblicato (BUR, 1994), e a momenti di assemblea.
Il libro riporta i frutti di questo lavoro:
- la parte centrale di ogni capitolo propone i dialoghi con i giovani;
- un paragrafo per capitolo esplicita sinteticamente la natura della virtù in questione e i fondamentali passaggi nei quali si articola la lezione;
- alcuni capitoli contengono paragrafi dedicati a specifici temi, secondo l’ordine con cui sono emersi nel corso dell’anno.
Per facilitare l’utilizzo del libro anche come strumento di approfondimento del precedente volume, i commenti e le domande sono stati ordinati secondo l’articolazione delle lezioni di Si può vivere così? (BUR, 1994) a cui fanno riferimento (i titoli delle sezioni e dei capitoli sono gli stessi). Per identificare con immediatezza le diverse parti del libro, i passaggi di Si può vivere così? sono stati riportati in corpo minore e con diverso rientro, mentre tutti gli interventi sono in corsivo.
In appendice è pubblicato il testo Dallo statuto della Associazione ecclesiale Memores Domini (pp. 589-590).
Il volume è corredato di indici che fanno riferimento a entrambe le opere (BUR, 1996, pp. 591-630).

Nel 2011 BUR Rizzoli riedita il volume nella collana “Saggi”, si tratta di una ristampa conforme alla precedente edizione (isbn differente, restyling della copertina).
Il testo di Giussani non ha subito variazioni. Si segnala che nel colophon è riportato per errore il riferimento alla Prefazione di J. F. Stafford al volume ll senso religioso (Rizzoli, 1996). [P. M]

This volume originated as a transcript of the conversations the Author had with two groups of young people who had decided to commit their lives to Christ in a form of total dedication. These conversations had the volume Si può vivere così? Uno strano approccio all’esistenza cristiana (BUR, 1994) as their reference text whereby the Author rediscussed and deepened various themes, but kept its basic structure intact as the titles of the chapters show.

Introduction
It is reasonable to begin a journey such as this—committing your life to Christ in a form of total dedication—only if this desire is illuminated by clear reasons. We are here because during a meeting we saw something different and better, we sensed that the answer to the needs of life lies in the content of this path.

Touché, or about Real Knowledge
While discussing the reasonableness of beginning a journey of total dedication to Christ, the Author focuses on the importance of having good reasons which are based on something you have known with certainty. This is why he explains what knowing reality means to him.
Knowing means that reality comes past our eyes, our consciousness, and by coming past and imprinting its form on it, it provokes you, it leaves an imprint of fear or an imprint of hope, it shocks our consciousness. Knowledge implies an affection, it implies a backlash that is called affection, affectus. Our soul is touchée, touched: real knowledge is the combination of these two factors. Without one or the other of these two factors, we are unable to understand the object.

Words that Bind to Christ
Since vocation is God’s call to supreme friendship with Himself, to introduce us to a lifelong work this year we must realize the fundamental factors that enable this work. These three fundamental points, indicated by the whole history of the Church, are called the theological virtues: faith, hope and charity.

Chapter One—Faith
From Reason to Faith
The Author introduces a paragraph to the discussion of the problem of faith to explain how reason works.
1. Reason is awareness of reality according to the totality of its factors.
2. In the totality of its factors, first comes the impressiveness of the criteria by which reason judges itself (self-consciousness): these ultimate criteria are what we call heart, elementary experience. The backlash of reality awakens the criteria of the heart that was previously confused and asleep, so it awakens you to yourself. 
3. In trying to know all the factors of which reality is composed, reason senses that something is eluding it. Thus, reason implies the affirmation of the existence of Mystery, of a factor present in any experience that does not belong to the testable, countable, calculable factors of experience itself.
4. When faced with the Mystery, reason either pretends to deny its own limitation by saying, “If I keep going forward, I can get to know it”; or it denies the existence of this mysterious factor, “No way! It will be an illusion.”
5. The ultimate position of reason is called, in cognitive terms, the category of possibility and, in existential terms, begging: only if Mystery communicates itself does man begin to know something he had never known.
6. Christianity is the encounter with the Mystery made man.

Faith
Faith is a method of knowing reason, an indirect method, through a witness. The problem of Christian faith, the interplay of reason in faith, arose with the question the disciples asked before Jesus, “Who is this man? How can he be like this?” And the only answer is to repeat what He said about Himself. People believe through the testimony Jesus gave of Himself and accept His testimony because nobody ever did do, nobody ever could do and say things as He actually did and said them; not only is it something unusual, it is humanly inexplicable. Faith does not suppose faith to be faith, but it supposes reason.

Chapter Two—Freedom
To understand what freedom is, we have to begin from the experience that makes us feel free; and we feel free when we are satisfied, when a desire is satisfied. Saying “yes” or “no” is a power of freedom, but neither will this “yes” or “no” make you free: it is a consequence, not a definition of freedom. Freedom is the capacity for happiness, the capacity for total satisfaction. 

Chapter Three—Obedience
To obey means to act according to a criterion set by another. It is right to obey a person if there are adequate reasons to trust her. When can a person be trusted? When she communicates a conception of life all rooted in the original needs of the human heart; when she offers help in overcoming sacrifice; when this person acts out of a gratuitousness and not for any personal benefit.

Chapter Four—Hope
Hope is born from faith. From the memory of a fact—the presence of Christ who is God made man—there arises a certainty in the future that makes us capable of walking towards happiness, facing the sacrifices that must be faced. And thus, a relentless journey is possible, a limitless striving, starting with the certainty that He, as He owns history, will manifest Himself in it.

Chapter Five—Poverty
Poverty is not placing our hope of happiness in an object we fix ourselves. It is not disregard for things, but that freedom from things that occurs as a consequence of clearly identifying what we can hope for happiness from—the presence of Jesus from whom we expect everything, who is everything.

Chapter Six—Trust
Trust is to entrust yourself to someone, to trust in the presence that faith recognizes. Christ sustains all of life’s weight, all of our future, until it arrives at completeness, at the final fulfillment of God’s design, which is our destiny. Trust has hope within it, as fulfillment, and it has poverty within it as a rule of life. The first corollary of trust is a glad abandonment; the second corollary is a strength, a challenge, “I am capable of all things together with Him in whom lies my strength.”

Memory, the Awareness of a Presence
In this paragraph the Author delves into an answer that was given in Si può vivere così? (BUR, 1994) and that was based on the theme of memory.
If memory is the awareness of a Presence, must the awareness of this Presence be in every action? You do not need to think of it for every action, but you need to desire this memory, to desire the awareness of this Presence, to love the awareness of this Presence. If only every action could be intrusive! Christianity is here, it is everything: not things to be observed, not laws to be observed, but a Presence to look at, a human presence to look at.

Chapter Seven—Charity
To some extent, charity already comes into play with nature, as it persuades it to be faithful in the perception of Mystery; but then it comes in to reveal what the Mystery is, the depths of the Mystery. Charity, in fact, is the gift of God, the gift of Being. Being is a generator without measure nor end; it is a generator without something in return. But God is also man, is more man than man: God’s gratuitousness is full of compassion. By taking part in this moved charity, man himself becomes capable of charity.

Chapter Eight—Sacrifice
Sacrifice is not only unavoidable for anyone, but it is unavoidable for the act we perform to be right, that is, to be true and good, to be an affirmation of the living Mystery and not of an idol. Without sacrifice, our action is never born of charity, it has nothing to do with charity, it never loves! Without sacrifice, our action is unable to love, neither human beings nor things.

Chapter Nine—Virginity
Virginity is extreme rationality in action, because it consists in looking at every reality without breaking the connection that this reality has with the totality of meaning, the cosmos.
First of all, virginity needs man to be what he was made for, desire for happiness. Secondly, virginity needs someone to recognize destiny, the ultimate object of one’s desire for happiness, aware of oneself—Jesus present in history, now. Sacrifice is a necessary condition —and not an end in itself—for the relationship with the presence of this destiny. From here comes a free relationship with things as well as the greatest suggestiveness in human experience—passion for the world.