At Palazzo Borromeo, the headquarters of the Italian Embassy in the Vatican, the book "This is the hour of love: the heart to the Word, the face to the neighbor" was presented, a true "journey" into the heart of man for the difficult times we are living in.

The author, Don Valerio Chiovaro, a faithful priest, was the one to open the meeting in Jerusalem. His knowledge of the scriptures and the Holy Land leads to rediscovering an inner fertility that the noise of the world risks suffocating. Jerusalem, Don Valerio recalled, teaches the dimension of the "sterile womb", in which the human impossibility makes room for God, urging to be not protagonists at all costs, but silent witnesses. "In today's world, where everyone wants to be the word, to give their voice and their silence to the Word, it can be a beautiful image," said Don Valerio. "And sometimes one must know how to be the voice of silence."

The Holy Land restores the deep meaning of waiting, where nostalgia is an opening to God's promise. Solitude must be understood as the necessary space to welcome the emptiness of others without expecting to fill it with easy consolations. Reflecting on the temporal dimension of love, the author emphasized how the resurrection does not make excuses or postpone: "the hour of love" does not wait for the end of wars, but confronts our conscience in the present. To preserve the Word of God means preserving inner freedom to turn to those next to us. Questioned on how to concretize this attitude in the face of pain, Don Valerio explained: "The fundamental condition to love above all is to be, not to do," remembering: "I listen to the sirens, I feel the children crying, I go down to the shelter, I welcome the broken Israeli youth, I welcome the Palestinian youth... This is the hour of love: the 'how' is to be."

Then Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Patriarch of Jerusalem, intervened, highlighting how the itinerary of the book — born from listening to the Lectio Divina — helps to bring Scripture into the most current questions. Recalling the chapters of the text, Pizzaballa recalled the urgency of not being overwhelmed by pain and starting from the Apocalypse, he reminded that Christian life becomes barren when it forgets that at its origin there is a love received freely. The Genesis page asks us to stop before that life and recognize that its dignity does not depend on our consent. "This is for every person," the Cardinal emphasized. "The Genesis page asks us to stop before that life and recognize that its dignity does not depend on our consent. It is for everyone."

The Patriarch highlighted how consolation is born from feeling heard. In the Cenacle, Jesus gives us the new command in the hour of betrayal, showing a love not conditioned by rejection. Christ empties himself and assumes the condition of a servant: the Gospel asks us to share the fragility of people.

From here arises the possibility of a forgiveness that does not cancel justice, but prevents evil from guiding the future.

Cardinal Pizzaballa concluded: "A book like this asks time, its repetitions remind us that decisive things must be heard more than once. In the end, we find the heart and the face: the heart entrusted to the Word can guard a space that conflict cannot fully occupy, and from that space freedom can arise to turn the face to someone we had stopped looking at. I would like to take up this invitation with a question: 'Which face awaits that I recognize right now that this is the hour of love?'"