After ruthlessly denouncing the subtle self-love that separates us from God, the pride that eats away at our hearts and vitiates our best actions, Giustiniani again shows that the only true path of return to God is humility, the humility that was perfectly exemplified in Christ.

Our hidden self-love brings forth all manner of illusions: ecstasies, visions, revelations, prophecies, abstinences impossible to human strength; the experience of Christ’s sufferings, the wound in the side, the stigmata, knowledge acquired without study, speaking in strange languages, the desire to be damned for the love of Christ; extraordinary humiliations, sublime confessions, fasting from all food except the blessed Eucharist, vigils beyond human strength, unduly prolonged prayer, knowledge of the secrets of hearts, miracles, and cures. All these marvels are, in some instances, nothing but the work of him who said, and would like to induce us to say: “I shall be like the Most High. I shall do what He does….” I think that these saints under the influence of Lucifer are much more numerous, or rather much better known and more admired by the world, than the true saints, who do nothing in order to be known by the world, but stay hidden. Christ’s true servants love God totally and not themselves. So sheltered are they by humility that they are known to God and not to men.  –Blessed Paul Giustiniani