Reading the pages of Giustiniani on annihilation, we are reminded of Saint John of the Cross, who describes the soul that is purified and ready for union with God in these terms: “In this detachment the spiritual soul finds its quiet and repose; for, since it covets nothing, nothing wearies it when it is lifted up, and nothing oppresses it when it is cast down, because it is in the center of its humility; but when it covets anything, at that very moment it becomes wearied.”

The whole purpose of the solitary life is to bring the soul into “the center of her humility” and to keep it there. The hermit does not pretend to have acquired any esoteric secret or any exalted technique by which he penetrates into the mystery of God. His only secret is the humility and poverty of Christ and the knowledge that God lifts up those who have fallen: Dominus erigit elisos. Without this humility, the contemplative can be a prey to “all the illusions.” For “the true servants of Christ love God with all their being, and do not love themselves at all. They keep themselves so perfectly under the guardianship of humility as to be known by God alone, but unknown to men.”  —Blessed Paul Giustiniani

How many there are who believe they are spiritual and wish to enjoy bodily and spiritual rest in God, not for love of God but for love of themselves. They prefer their illusory consolations to works of obedience and fraternal charity. They dislike whatever deprives them of the rest they think they find in God, but which they really seek in themselves. Their whole concern is to find peace: not, it is true, in things inferior to themselves nor in themselves, but in God. Yet that peace is desired for love of themselves, not for God’s glory. On the contrary, souls that have attained perfect love no longer desire for themselves either virtues, or sensible devotion, or tears, or spiritual consolations, or ecstasies, or prophecies. If they have such gifts, they value them lightly; if they have them not, they do not seek them, for it suffices them to love God alone in God.

There are spiritual men who pass for saints and who rejoice in the progress of their order or their monastery. But so far as their neighbor goes, they are not exactly sad at his progress — for that would be a crime — but they rejoice less at it than at that which concerns themselves. If they will examine their attitude they will discover that they desire their progress or that of their monastery more than God’s glory: they do not love God in Himself.

The soul which rejoices in God and in Him alone is willing to do without any consolation. If it could love God a bit more on condition that it never feel any actual devotion, spiritual tranquillity, or sweetness, and be deprived of all hope of these gifts in this life or the next, it would accept this exchange. For it loves God no less when it feels no consolation, no actual devotion. These are gifts of God, and we love Him equally whether we feel them or are deprived of them. If, by hypothesis, we even had to lose God for His glory rather than lessening His glory by possessing Him, then the soul consumed with love would desire that by its damnation God received a bit more glory. —Blessed Paul Giustiniani

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

Lord Jesus, who are the light without which nothing is enlightened, who alone see the darkness that surrounds me, I dare not say: give me the light to see Your light. It is enough for me that You make me see my darkness. I am so blind that I cannot see it. I even take it for light. I am so deeply in error that I do not perceive my error: I mistake falsehood for truth. Death has advanced upon me so far that, wounded and all covered with sores, I no longer feel my pain and my wounds. Bring me back to myself: for in my misery I have strayed not only from You but also from myself; I have become a stranger to myself. Bring me back to myself in order that I may then go towards You. Make me know my darkness, so that I may then look at the Light: if I do not know my own misery, I will not have recourse to Your mercy. Because of my sins I am reduced to nothing in the sight of Your Majesty: grant that I may be reduced to nothing in my own eyes also; grant that I may despise myself completely, that I may gauge the extent of my impurity. I am nothing in Your sight until I am brought to nothing in my own eyes. I cannot arise from my wretchedness as long as I do not see it. And so I do not say to You with Moses: “Show Thyself to me”; I only say to You: “Show me to myself.”  –Paul Giustiniani

In the end, our intellectual poverty is to renounce all rational ‘possession’ of God (in other words to renounce all the idols which we have made in our image and to our own measure) in order to be pure receptivity to the Mystery that He will forever remain, even while giving Himself completely to us as He is. Communion with this Mystery really does exist.

The darkness nurtures a hidden fire which, otherwise, would swallow it up. Loving faith rediscovers signs, but in a different manner; its purified gaze makes signs transparent to God, to the world of revealed truth, to the humanity of Christ: while remaining exactly what they are, they nonetheless become like clear crystal through which the divine light passes unobstructed. A tree is a tree, bread is bread, wind is wind, but in another dimension, on another level of consciousness, all is light, all is God. For God is not an object among other objects. It is for this reason that our understanding, made to know material things, only knows Him as darkness.

In order to know God, we must become as He is and be introduced to a way of knowing, God’s way, which is no different from His very being. This knowledge is transformation, love, Spirit.

‘You must give up our old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and the holiness of the truth.’ (Ephesians 4:22-24) –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian

Did they (Peter, John, and James at the Transfiguration) realize what was going to happen? It is not likely, judging from the naivete of their reactions. They climbed the mountain with him; but, as we have said, we cannot speak of a prayer which would be strictly theirs. They are simply engulfed in the radiance of Jesus. Their contemplation does not spring forth from their own depths, but is an overflow of the prayer of Jesus which descends upon them. Today, ‘God himself has shone in their hearts to radiate the knowledge of his glory, the glory on the face of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:6).

We should see in them much more than simple witnesses: they truly participate in the mystery which is being accomplished before their eyes, in so far as they receive that which Jesus gives them in simplicity and humility. God is content with this good will; even as Peter makes a remark which betrays his lack of understanding of the situation, the cloud through which they will enter into intimacy with the Father is already approaching.

‘A bright cloud covered them with its shadow.’ We find here the hallmark of the most solemn moments in salvation history, when God chooses to reveal his greatest secrets. On Sinai, Moses entered into a cloud before Yahweh revealed his name to him. In like manner, at the dedication of the new temple, Solomon found himself taken up into a cloud as Yahweh came to take possession of his dwelling place. Finally, at the Annunciation, is this not the characteristic sign of the presence of God that the angel gives to the Virgin: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow’?

Here, the, are three poor disciples, men of no exceptional merit, who enter into the cloud, the loftiest image of divine power. They have direct access to the Father, for they are close to Jesus and are his friends. Their dullness, their incomprehension, does not matter, their hearts are given totally to Jesus and that is enough. –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian Miscellany

Therefore, in our present situation the will must be corrected by a double effort.  First, our effort should go towards total submission of our will to God and to conformity to His divine will.  Secondly, a great effort is necessary to increase the power of the will with regard to the interior faculties until it can subject them completely to itself.  In other words, one must attempt to regain, at the cost of great effort and the help of grace, the initial rectitude that the will enjoyed when it came forth from the creative hands of God.  –Silence: A Series of Conferences Given by a Camaldolese Hermit