The
St.
Perth - Western Australia
Oblates affiliated to Holy Trinity Abbey,
New Norcia
New Norcia web site - www.newnorcia.wa.edu.au
Period June
- August 2008
MEETING PLACE
Chapter meetings are held at
Meetings are held each 3rd. Sunday, commencing at
June - Chapter meeting to be held on Sunday, 15 June. Discussion on RB
70 & the Gospel of the day - Mt.9:36-10:8.
July - Chapter meeting to be held on Sunday, 20 July. Discussion on RB
71 & the Gospel of the day - Mt.13:24-43.
August - Chapter meeting to be held on Sunday, 17 August. Discussion on
RB 72 & the Gospel of the day - Mt.15:21-28.
PRAYER LIST
Please remember all our sick oblates - in particular Pat Cockett & Michael Kent.
Prayers requested for Des Hoad.
Also and always, continue to pray for our parent community in New Norcia.
Would you please remember all our deceased oblates.
ITEMS OF INTEREST
As usual, a good number of oblates were in
attendance at the annual retreat held at New Norcia
during the Trinity Sunday weekend in May.
Our congratulations to Anne Morris on taking her final
oblation during the retreat. Abbot Placid conducted the ceremony,
assisted by
Oblates will please note that our September chapter meeting will be held on the
fourth Sunday of the month and not the third, ie 28
September, at the usual time. This will be the occasion of our fiftieth
anniversary. Further details of the format proposed for this event, to be given
in the next newsletter.
HUMILITY IN THE RULE OF ST.
BENEDICT
By Fr. Timothy Sweeney OSB
For some time now, the very word humility has been so distorted and
misunderstood that one even hesitates to use it. Even back in the 1950s, on the
popular Arthur Godfrey radio show, there was a then-famous tenor named Julius LaRosa who was fired by Godfrey. When asked by the press
about this termination, Godfrey is reported to have answered - 'he lacks
humility'.
Further investigation found that LaRosa was simply
asking for a raise in salary! Is asking for a raise in the 1950's an act of 'unhumility' or pride? Further along, in our 1990s world,
with its strong emphasis on self-assertion and rights, to even mention the
virtue of humility seems terribly out of place. For many today, 'humility'
means being a milquetoast, one we say, who has no backbone. To be sure, there's
a lot of confusion about humility.
In the history of Christian spirituality, especially from the Middle Ages on, humility is viewed simply as the virtue opposing
the vice of pride. Even the great monastic writer, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, contrasts the 12 steps of humility in the Rule
of St. Benedict to 12 steps of pride. True enough, it
is that, but I think we'll see that humility is much more than simply the
virtue opposed to pride.
We are faced right off with three difficulties -1. our
contemporary confusion about humility as being a sort of weak-kneed approach to
life -2. the narrowing down of humility in Christian
spirituality to just one of the virtues - 3. when we
turn to the RB, we're faced with the additional difficulty of understanding the
way in which St. Benedict and the early Christian
writers expressed their thoughts. They were soaked in the Sacred Scriptures and
they had their own particular way of expressing themselves. Here in the 21st.
century, we seem so distant from those early writers, that when we pick up the
Rule and read Chapter 7 'On Humility', it's not surprising to learn that people
have difficulty grasping the meaning and importance of humility for us today.
What does St. Benedict propose to us as the import of
humility? Why does he devote an entire chapter and a long one at that, to what
we commonly refer to as the virtue of humility? Let's go to the last step of
humility, the 12th. degree and the conclusion of this
chapter. There we might see more clearly what humility is about and why it is
so significant.
Underlying what St. Benedict has to say in this 12th degree, is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector
Lk.18:9-14. Each of these men produces a prayer. The Pharisee offers a prayer
of thanks, the tax collector's prayer is simply a cry
for forgiveness, for mercy. How does Jesus react? The tax collector went home
'upright in the sight of God,' Jesus explains. The Pharisee does not. The
self-confessed sinner was pleasing to God, the self -
professed saint was not. Why? The Pharisee wasn't lying or exaggerating his
actions. Jesus does not challenge the Pharisee's facts. Jesus does not say -
'man, you're a liar, on fast days you sneak chocolates and you actually give 5%
to the temple and not 10%.' No, the parable has bite to it precisely because
the Pharisee does every single thing his religion demands of him and perhaps
more. Looking at what he does, you cannot fault him.
What's the problem, then? Review the first verses of this parable - Jesus 'told
this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were upright and
despised everybody else.' This Pharisee thought that what made him pleasing in
God's sight was his own laundry list of good works. He looked down his arrogant
nose at the rest of the human race, everyone who did not duplicate his good
deeds.
Yet the Lord applauded the tax collector because he trusted not in himself but
in God. The man did not contrast himself with anyone else. He did not care to
comment on any member of the congregation save himself - '0 God, be merciful to
me the sinner!'
The base, the foundation of humility, is a sharp consciousness of being a
sinner. It's a deep awareness of the need for redemption, salvation. In a
sense, it's a persistent, open acknowledgement on our part that we can't raise
ourselves into eternal life by our own bootstraps! If the first degree of
humility urges us to a conscious awareness of God's presence, 'always', 'constantly',
'at every moment', it is to provide us with a foundation as needful persons for
our God's help and strength. Don't misunderstand. An awareness of all that God
has given us - talents, intelligence, health - is
certainly in order. But unless we recognise such things precisely as gifts,
unless we can add - '0 God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am,' - our
awareness is incomplete, unrealistic.
For St. Benedict, a sign of this recognition is found
in the bowed head of Christ as He hangs on the cross, the ultimate act of
humility, the ultimate act of love for us. For Jesus stands
as our model in giving Himself for others. True humility, true awareness
of self as sinner, leads us into the mystery of our dying and rising with
Christ. For St. Benedict, humility is more than just
one of the virtues, it is the daily participation in
the mystery of Christ's dying and rising. This is why St. Benedict
immediately adds, 'the monk will quickly arrive at that perfect love of God
which casts out fear'1Jn.4:18. The practice of humility leads to an Easter
blossoming of ourselves. Humility arrives at a flowering forth of love in us,
right here and now in our earthly existence.
To follow Christ into this daily mystery of dying and rising,
means that we too have to make good decisions despite difficult and
unfavourable circumstances [second-fourth degrees]. Indeed we can expect
''difficult, unfavourable or even unjust conditions' [fourth degree] in our
lives since our model Christ, experienced the same. If St. Benedict
teaches that we should be open and honest in our own hearts [fifth degree], it
is only through a radical truthfulness that self-deception can be avoided. To
enter the mystery of humility, to align ourselves with the dying and rising of
Christ, progressively asks of us a crucial truthfulness for which our awareness
of God's continual presence provides the groundwork. For we
must be keenly aware of our need for our God, of our gifted strengths and
ever-present weaknesses and not presume that we are able of our own accord to
enter this mystery of humility. For we are servants of the Master and on
coming in from the fields, we prepare the Master's supper, declaring - 'we are
merely servants, we have done no more than our duty' Lk.17:7-10.
Attaining a freedom granted only by this radical truthfulness, we don't have to
concern ourselves with the opinion of others or search to distinguish ourselves
from others by blatant forms of singularity [eighth degree]. There is no 'cult
of the personality' when we can accept the wisdom of ancestors, when we can
abide by the ordinary and don't indulge the ever-so-current desire to be
'different' just for the sake of being different. Only the person solidly based
in Christ's dying and rising can tranquilly accept himself or herself as is,
without making comparisons with others, like our Pharisee.
Is it any wonder that St. Benedict so stresses the
proper use of human speech (ninth-eleventh degrees)?
What we have to say and how we say it, reveals just how truthful we are with
ourselves. Even accepting differences in personalities, the constant talker,
the buffoon, the consistently boring person, reveals an interior emptiness, a
desire to cover over with sound and noise the aching hollowness. An ancient
writing speaks of God as a sweet well for a person thirsting in the desert.
This well is sealed up to the person who has discovered his or her mouth, but
is unopen to the silent. A bit of an exaggeration,
perhaps but surely the point is that the appropriate use of speech has far more
to say about our interior life than the subject of our talk. If titillating
gossip and detraction are so commonly among us, don't they reveal more about
our interior life than the subjects of our gossip and detraction?
We are indeed 'workmen,' as St. Benedict tells us,
daily labouring in our dyings and risings, struggling
with the aid of the Holy Spirit to bring forth that 'love which casts out all
fear.' We do not, as it were, climb these steps of humility once and for all.
Rather, we return again and again, throughout our lives to this particular
degree or to another one or ones. As we move on in our pilgrimage, we meet new
and different circumstances. Perhaps our health has deteriorated from our hale
and hearth-days. Our daily dyings and risings are now
accompanied with aches and pains, pills and diets. We come back once again to
climb the ladder of humility. We are 'workman' continually returning to repair,
to improve, to rectify again and again our imitation
of Christ. With God's grace and help, we continually grow into the likeness of
His Son, Jesus Christ.
For St. Benedict, humility isn't just one of the virtues, it's the whole way of the Christian life. Humility
is like a small creek that begins in the hidden depths of a forest, yet in turn
spills into a river and then into the
Is it any wonder then, that St. Benedict
immediately follows up his treatment of humility with his chapters on prayer RB
8-20? True, St. Benedict's seeming lack of any full-blown treatment on prayer
has mystified some people. These chapters on prayer deal mostly with the
practical arrangement of the Divine Office with only a brief chapter on 'Reverence
in Prayer' RB 20. Benedict is indeed writing a
'little rule' for 'the beginnings of monastic life' RB 73, so an exhaustive
treatment of prayer would not seem opportune at this point. Yet notice that
these chapters on prayer follow immediately the chapter concerning humility.
The conclusion to this chapter on humility, with its reference to a 'perfect
love which casts out fear' and the Holy Spirit, strongly hints that our prayer
life too, blossoms in our entering into this mystery of humility.
Humility for St. Benedict is a wav of life. It's the
Christian way of life. It embraces our consistent effort to model our lives on
the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Simply put, humility is the wide-angle, all-embracing truth of our lives in
this world. Despite our contemporary misunderstandings of humility and the
narrow scope in some Christian writings, with further study, reflection and
prayer on this wise chapter in the Rule, we gradually arrive at a more complete
grasp of our lives here on earth and a clear intimation of what lies ahead. For
St. Benedict, humility is a much broader and deeper
reality than simply the virtue opposed to the vice of pride. It is a way of
life, the lived Paschal Mystery, not just some sort of external patina that is
exposed to others. True humility strikes deep roots that give us stability in
the midst of this life's soft spring breezes and violent tornadoes.
THE DESERT FATHERS
Continuing some articles on the era of the Desert Fathers, taken
from 'Desert Christians', by William Harmless SJ.
This issue looks at some of the monastic settlements located along the length
of the River Nile, particularly Scetis, Nitria, Kellia, Tabennesi and Pbow.
Scetis - was founded around 330 by Macarius the Egyptian. The Apophthegmata
refers to this region as 'the great desert'. The name Scetis
is said to come from a Coptic word, meaning 'to weigh the heart' - an apt name
for a place where men, in the quest for God, spent their lives probing the
depths and vagaries of the human heart. The site was located some forty miles
south of the other great monastic settlement of Lower Egypt, Nitria, which in turn was located some forty miles
south-east of Alexandria.
Rufinus of Aquileia, who
helped popularise Egyptian monasticism in the Latin West, describes some of the
hazards of travelling to Scetis from the north - 'The
place where St. Macarius lived is called Scetis. It is in a vast wilderness, a day and night's
journey from the monasteries of Nitria and the way to
it is not found or shown by any track or landmarks on the ground but one
journeys by the signs and courses of the stars. Water is hard to find and when
it is found, it has a bad smell, bituminous, yet inoffensive to the taste. Here
men are made perfect in holiness, but none but those of austere resolution and
supreme constancy can endure such a terrible spot.'
It is located in a twenty two mile long valley, west of the
Housing - Scetis was a constellation of small cells
distributed along the wadi. Elsewhere in lower Egypt, monks lived in small mud brick huts. An abba might gather his disciples and in a single day build a
cell for a newcomer. Scetis may have huts like this,
but at least some cells were in caves or built up against the rock face of the
valley. Most cells had two rooms, one as a place to work, eat and receive
visitors, the other as a place of prayer. The monks might sit on mats during
the day and sleep on them at night.
Work - The monks would spend much of their time doing manual labour. The usual
enterprises were rope making and basket weaving, Reeds
and palm leaves were harvested from the nearby marshes. Manual labour was not
an end in itself. As Cassian remarks - 'When I was in
Scetis, the work of the soul was our real job and our
handiwork we thought of as a sideline'.
Food, Fasting and Hospitality - Many sayings in desert literature touch on food
and fasting. Abba Poeman was one of the great
moderates of Scetis and critical of those going to
extremes. He admitted past experiments, saying - 'the Fathers tried all this
out but eventually found it preferable to eat every day, but just a small
amount.' Although Poeman may have thought it easy by
desert standards, the normal diet was austere to say the least. They ate two
small loaves of bread a day - two loaves together weighing a pound. The bread
could be kept for months (remember
The monks relaxed all rigor when travellers arrived.
One visitor apologised for causing his host to break his fast, but the abba replied - 'My rule is to refresh you and send you away
in peace'.
The Weekly Schedule - Monks at Scetis would spend
Monday to Friday in their cells. Typically they rose in the middle of the night
between 12 and
Abbas and Disciples - Scetis
had no written rule. Small clusters of elders and their disciples formed the
basic organisation of Scetis. The elder would be
called abba - this being a term of respect not of
office. It did not mean the elder was a priest. In fact only a few figures
mentioned in the Apophthegmata were clerics and when
they did appear, the text often mentions it by name - eg
Abba Isidore the Priest.
The Four Congregations - During the time of Macarius,
four congregations developed at Scetis. Each had its
own church building and other structures like kitchens and bakeries. These buildings
formed an architectural nucleus for the far flung clusters of cells. Each
appears to have its own priest who presided over the weekly Eucharist and
exercised some functions of a monastic
Saturday & Sunday - the monks came together for worship and meals. Each
congregation gathered at its respective church and celebrated publicly what
they did privately during the week. Cassian, who
witnessed these liturgies, stressed their silent dignity, apparently in
contrast to the less-than-dignified behaviour he saw in southern
Destruction of Scetis. In
407, a tribe of barbarian raiders known as Mazices
came sweeping off the
Nitria - The founding father of Nitria was Abba Amoun, who came
from a wealthy family, but was orphaned at an early age. He was pressured into
marriage at 22, but with his wife's agreement they lived a celibate lifestyle.
Such celibate marriages were an old fashioned and venerable tradition of
Christian asceticism, attested especially in the Syrian culture. They lived
this way for 18 years, after which his wife exhorted him to go public, after
which Amoun left and built two domed cells on the
desert edge around 330. He lived there for the next 22 years, returning twice a
year to see his wife. He soon attracted disciples and his settlement grew
rapidly into one of the great centres of Egyptian monasticism. It was only in
the 1920's that the exact location of Nitria was
pinpointed. It was not in the centre of the desert, but rather stood at the
western edge of the Delta, forty miles south-east of
Nitria got its name from its proximity to lakes, from
which nitre was extracted. Palladius, in his Lausaic History, gives a vivid image of Nitria,
where he lived for a full year in 390. He claims there was
a population of 5000, some in cells alone, some in pairs and some in larger
houses. The monks here manufactured linen using flax from the nearby delta,
also wine for their own consumption as well as for profit. They cultivated
gardens and had seven large bakeries to support their own needs and their
outpost settlement of 600 located at Kellia.
Discipline was tough, Palladius saying that near the
church were three date palms, on which hung whips, one for backsliding monks,
one for marauders and one for robbers who happened by.
Yet Nitria was renowned for its hospitality,
providing a guesthouse where postulants might stay from a week to a few years.
Rufinus who visited 15 years earlier, reports that on
his visit, monks poured out of their cells like a swarm of bees to welcome him.
It was not the semi-anchoritic life of Scetis, but
more like a desert city with clerical leadership and clear links to the larger
world.
Kellia ('the Cells') was situated close by Nitria and was an equally famous monastic settlement. The Apophthegmata gives an account of its foundation -
"One day
Kellia's solitude was reserved for advanced monks,
stripped down to bare rudiments. Rufinus, on his
visit, was struck by the silence - 'a prodigious silence and a great
stillness'. Palladius says, that in the years he
lived in Kellia, in the 390's, some 600 monks called
it home. Oversight of the community came from a priest-monk, assisted by a
council of elders. For his first three years there, his superior was Macarius the Alexandrian, a figure often confused with, but
very different from his namesake, Macarius the
Egyptian. In 1964, the ruins of Kellia were
discovered and proved to be massive, covering 49 square miles.
Tabennesi - It was about the year 323 that Pachomius was called to leave his previous anchoritic life
and move to Tabennesi, together with his older
brother John. Here he experienced another great revelation calling him to
minister to the race of men and unite them to the Lord. Pachomius
had a large vision of things and commenced building a sizable monastery. It was
not long before some 100 had joined them. They adopted a cenobitic
life - monasticism lived in community. The establishment expanded rapidly and
they built a church within the monastery grounds. Pachomius'
sister, Mary arrived and they built a monastery for her, paving the way for
other women to arrive, with her serving as their superior. By 329 the numbers
had so increased that Pachomius decided to expand
things and established a major new foundation at Pbow.
Pbow - This became the
central monastery and soon after two others were added at Seneset and Timousons. By 345,
the year before he died, there were nine monasteries for men and two for women.
So began the Koinonia the 'fellowship' which
encompassed the federation of monasteries.
Pachomius's achievement comes from the way he brought
together a collection of monasteries into a tightly regulated whole, with a
single head, a carefully ordered hierarchy of offices and an intricate rhythm
of work, prayer and spiritual formation. Not until the Middle
Ages, would a monastic order match Pachomius's in
size and sophistication.
Jerome makes the outrageous claim of 50,000 Pachomian
monks, but closer to the mark would be John Cassian,
of 5000.
Other Sites - The unknown author of the History of the Monks also helps
us scan the wide sweep of early Egyptian monasticism, to glimpse the welter of
sites and experiments in lifestyle. Some monks lived scattered in the marshes
near the
In the next issue we will examine
some of the settlement founders and major personalities who dominated
monasticism in
TERRORISM USES VIOLENCE IN
GOD'S NAME
By Pope Benedict
XVI - from Zenit.org September 2007
Terrorism is a serious problem, says Benedict XVI and
one in which violence and disregard for human life is used in God's name.
The Pope said this upon receiving in audience participants of the executive
council meeting of the Centrist Democrat International, a global political
party that promotes Christian democracy. The encounter took place at
The Holy Father said that terrorism 'is a serious problem whose perpetrators
often claim to act in God's name and harbour an inexcusable contempt for human
life.'
He said that the violent acts are based on the 'charge that society has
forgotten God, an accusation shamelessly exploited by some terrorist networks
in an attempt to justify their threats against global security.
'Terrorism needs to be fought with determination and effectiveness,' added the
Pontiff, 'mindful that if the mystery of evil is widespread today, the
solidarity of mankind in goodness is an even more pervasive mystery. In
democratic systems, the use of force in a manner contrary to the principles of
a constitutional state can never be justified. Indeed, how can we claim to
protect democracy if we threaten its very foundations? Consequently, it is
necessary both to keep careful watch over the security of civil society and its
citizens while at the same time safeguarding the inalienable rights of all.'
Ideologies
Benedict XVI invited those present to work 'to
prevent the dissemination and entrenchment of ideologies which obscure and
confuse consciences by promoting an illusory vision of truth and goodness.' He
also denounced the existence of a 'tendency to view financial gain as the only
good, thus eroding the internal ethos of commerce to the point that even profit
margins suffer.'
He expressed his concern that 'there are some who believe that it is legitimate
to destroy human life in its earliest or final stages. Equally troubling is the
growing crisis of the family, which is the fundamental nucleus of society based
on the indissoluble bond of marriage between a man and a woman. Experience has
shown that when the truth about man is subverted or the foundation of the
family undermined, peace itself is threatened and the rule of law is
compromised, leading inevitably to forms of injustice and violence.'
Benedict XVI said that the exercise of religious
freedom 'also includes the right to change religion, which should be guaranteed
not only legally, but also in daily practice.'
GOD & I
By Paul Williams taken from The Marion Centre newsletter
Dec. 2007.
From Buddha to Christ - one of the world's leading experts on Buddhism, in an
interview talks about his conversion to Catholicism.
Q. You were raised an Anglican. Then, as a youth, you fell under the spell of
Buddhism and became one of the most learned scholars of that religion in the
world. One of your publications has even become a standard text-book on
Mahayana Buddhism and you are Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at the
A. What attracted me to Buddhism was that it is a complete religion, but
without some of the 'drawbacks' of Christianity. For example, Buddhists do not
believe in God and that in a way solves many problems, like those connected
with God and evil. One must bear in mind that it is simply not true that
someone who rejects a theistic religion like Christianity will automatically
become a non religious materialist. It is actually possible to have a religion
that doesn't believe in God. It is possible to follow a path of deep morality
and meditation without belief in God at all.
Q. Toward the end of the 90's you experienced a shock conversion to
Christianity. What aspects of Buddhism did you eventually become dissatisfied
with?
A. Particularly reincarnation! The more I thought about reincarnation the more
I realised that if it is true, then reincarnation means effectively the end of
us. If I were to die today and reincarnate as a cockroach in
Even if I were reincarnated as a human being looking like me, it still wouldn't
be me. Buddhists tend to lose sight of this. So I gradually realised how there
is no hope in reincarnation and this led me to the thought - 'Christians have
hope!' If Christianity is true, then the story is not over for the person we
are. Christianity also offers an unbelievably wonderful relationship with God,
so the next thing I asked myself was - 'Am I sure that Christianity is false?'
I had many friends who were very intelligent Christians, so I knew that clever
people could be Christians and I also realised that I had never fully
investigated Christianity. I went back and looked at the problem of the
existence of God and the problem of God and evil, to see whether I could
believe in God. I came to realise that belief in God was as rational and
defensible as the Buddhist rejection of God - indeed, of course, I now think
more so.
Q. Your conversion was not so much a conversion to Christianity, as a
conversion to Roman Catholicism. What was the moment, or the person, or the
idea that carried you towards Catholicism?
A. The first stage of this process was coming to believe in the existence of
God. The second stage was coming to Christianity, because after all a belief in
God doesn't necessarily make you a Christian. You could be a Muslim or a
follower of the Jewish faith.
Now what actually converted me specifically to Christianity was the realisation
that the Resurrection literally occurred, that the more we look at the event of
Easter, it appears more rational to believe in the resurrection than not to
believe in it, this astonishing eruption of the sacred into the world.
The next question was - 'What type of Christianity?' In my book The Unexpected
Way I suggest that Catholicism is the 'default' position of Christianity. In
other words, if one is a Christian, one needs a very good reason not to be a
Catholic.
Now the arguments against Catholicism include things like authority, not
wanting to be told what to think, the primacy of the papacy, contraception,
abortion, confession, etc.
In the book I consider each of these objections. But honestly, I find that the
position of the Magisterium is the true and most
rational one. Moreover, I also argue that even if there were sometimes mistakes
in the Magisterium, that would still not be a knock down argument to convince
me not to be a Catholic - to suggest that the Holy Spirit in the Christian
faith must really be elsewhere. So I needed argument against Catholicism, the
Christian 'default' position, but I could not find one
Q. You have said, 'I strongly suspect that many western Buddhists deep down are
still Christians.' What do you mean by this?
A. G K Chesterton once said that ex-Christians who adopted non-Christian
religions never truly adopt them, they only really
adopt Christianity minus the bits they don't like. Many Western Buddhists, for
example, haven't really adopted Buddhism as it is understood and practiced in
traditional Buddhist communities. Rather they've adopted Christianity minus
God, minus the things they had difficulty with.
REFLECTION
Taken from the Oblate newsletter of
'Relieve the poor' - does this really have anything to do with being a
Christian, being 'in Christ?'
Closely linked to this is another reason. We are to treat others as God has
treated us. We were poor, estranged from Him by sin and selfishness and death.
But He has made us rich with His own richness, sending His Spirit that cries
within us 'Abba, Father.' It is this same Spirit in us that urges us to relieve
the poor, our brothers, not only the materially poor. There are the poor who
have been deprived of their rights, the poor of third world countries and the
ordinary poor so close to us we may not see them - the lonely, the sick and the
troubled. All we can help in some way - by prayer, social action and personal
contact.
The Spirit within us urges us to share with these, that which we have. Our own
poverty will only be abolished by the special riches these 'poor' possess. The
Spirit of the Risen Christ has created a community of gifts, in which all are
to share the riches of each other.
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