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fulfilled  QUOTES

4 " All that is worthy of love [*die Liebenswürdigkeiten*], from the viewpoint of God's comprehensive love, might have been stamped and created by this act of love; man's love does not so stamp or create its objects. Man's love is restricted to recognizing the objective demand these objects make and to submitting to the gradation of rank in what is worthy of love. This gradation exists in itself, but in itself it exists " for" man, ordered to his *particular* essence. Loving can be characterized as correct or false only because a man's actual inclinations and acts of love can be in harmony with or oppose the rank-ordering of what is worthy of love. In other words, man can feel and know himself to be at one with, or separated and opposed to, the love with which God loved the idea of the world or its content before he created it, the love with which he preserves it at every instant. If a man in his actual loving, or in the order of his acts of love, in his preferences and depreciations, subverts this self-existent order, he simultaneously subverts the intention of the divine world-order―as it is in his power to do. And whenever he does so, his world as the possible object of knowledge, and his world as the field of willing, action, and operation, must necessarily fall as well.This is not the place to speak about the content of the gradations of rank in the realm of all that is worthy of love. It is sufficient here to say something about the *form* and *content* of the realm itself.From the primal atom and the grain of sand to God, this realm is *one* realm. This " unity" does not mean that the realm is closed. We are conscious that no one of the finite parts of it which are given to us can exhaust its fullness and its extension. If we have only *once* experienced how one feature which is worthy of love appears next to another―or how another feature of still higher value appears over and above one which we had taken till now as the " highest" in a particular region of values, then we have learned the essence of progress in or penetration into the realm. Then we see that this realm cannot have precise boundaries. Only in this way can we understand that when any sort of love is fulfilled by an object adequate to it the satisfaction this gives us can never be definitive. Just as the essence of certain operations of thought which create their objects through self-given laws (e.g., the inference from *n* to *n* + *I*) prevents any limits from being placed on their application, so it is in the essence of the act of love as it fulfills itself in what is worthy of love that it can progress from value to value, from one height to an even greater height. " Our heart is too spacious," said Pascal. Even if we should know that our actual ability to love is limited, at the same time we know and feel that this limit lies neither in the finite objects which are worthy of love nor in the essence of the act of love as such, but only in our organization and the conditions it sets for the occurrence and *arousal* of the act of love. For this arousal is bound up with the life of our body and our drives and with the way an object stimulates and calls this life into play. But *what* we grasp as *worthy of love* is not bound up with these, and more than the *form and structure* of the realm of which this value shows itself to be a part." ―from_Ordo Amoris_ "

6 " Were you there?”
She shook her head. “No. I was here in Nain having a
child.”
“Then why do you weep as though you had part in his
crucifixion? You had no part in it.”
“I’d like nothing better than to think I would have
remained faithful. But if those closest to him—his
disciples, his own brothers—turned away, who am I to
think I’m better than they and would have done
differently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what we
wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose rather
than ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger.
Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God’s will that
prevails.”
He looked away. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know you don’t. I see it in your face, Marcus. You
don’t want to see. You’ve hardened your heart against
him.” She started to walk again.
“As should all who value their lives,” he said, thinking of
Hadassah’s death.
“It is God who has driven you here.”
He gave a derisive laugh. “I came here of my own
accord and for my own purposes.”
“Did you?” Marcus’ face became stony.
Deborah pressed on. “We were all created incomplete
and will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hunger
and thirst within us. You’ve tried to satisfy it in your own
way. I see that in your eyes, too, as I’ve seen it in so
many others. And yet, though you deny it with your last
breath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus Lucianus
Valerian.”
Her words angered him. “Gods aside, Rome shows
the world that life is what man makes of it.”
“If that’s so, what are you making of yours?”
“I own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums and
houses. I have wealth.” Yet, even as he told her, he
knew it all meant nothing. His father had come to that
realization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity.
Meaningless. Empty.
Old Deborah paused on the pathway. “Rome points the
way to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. But
Rome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now.
Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life,
but until you find God, you live in vain. "

Francine Rivers , An Echo in the Darkness (Mark of the Lion, #2)