The meaning of our life, that is, of this continuum of transmutation between energy and matter over a determined time, is given to us by a third factor: vocation. Someone has once said that the most important thing in life is not to reproduce but to produce, since even animals can reproduce. Vocation refers to this production; it gives meaning and justification to our living, and opens the door of eternity to us. Therefore, it links our temporality with eternity; however, we should not understand eternal life as an extension of time and space, but rather the absence of time and space.
When we speak about the beginning of the universe, we talk about the Big Bang that occurred on the day without a yesterday. With the Big Bang, time and space were created, which means that a reality existed before time and space – God. The third factor, vocation, has within it the meaning of our path, the way to Heaven on earth what we call happiness and the way to Heaven beyond time and space what we call eternity with God.
There are a countless number of books on spirituality that tell us that life is a gift from God. I do not deny that this is true; however, I prefer to look at life, especially at its spatial temporal stage, as a loan we have acquired from God. This loan consists of time, resources, materials or goods acquired or to be acquired, and spiritual resources, that is, talents that we are born with.
We are not the owners of our life, since we did nothing to have it, nor can we do anything to retain it. We are only stewards of the time we are given to live, of the place we occupy, of the material and spiritual resources that we have been entrusted with; of this stewardship, we will one day give an account to God who is the sole owner of our lives.
It is in this sense that the third factor, vocation, appears as the way by which our life will be productive, carrying out a project that will give it meaning in the here and now and beyond, leading us into eternity. A temporal life dedicated to the cultivation of human values leads to eternity, because human values are eternal, or timeless, they are unchanged by time, from one generation to another or by space, from one culture to another.
Without this third factor, human life as a gift would revolve around us instead; but since our life is not about us, it follows that it should not revolve around us, but rather around what we do with it, our vocation, our project, the gateway to self-fulfillment on earth and the conquest of Heaven.
TIME
Today’s man is strongly influenced by the spirituality of “presentism” which originated in the Far East, and by the philosophy of consumerism, which appeals more to our basic instincts and less to our reason, seeking to disconnect our acts in the present from their causes in the past and their consequences in the future. The goal is to lead man to live in a pseudo eternal present of a consumerist nirvana.
This philosophy can be good for the economy since it leads people to consume beyond their means as they can always borrow more money on their credit cards. The consequences of this philosophy are harmful to the health, but as these are faced only in the future, those who live only in the present do not care. It is a bit like the attitude of Karl Marx towards death: “this should not worry me,” he said, “for as long as I am, it (death) will not be, and when it is, I will not be.”
Surely life can only be lived in the present, as this is the only time when we are free to act and decide; the past can no longer be changed, and the future does not yet exist. However, the present is not only made of “present”, nor does the past refers only to the past and the future does not exist only in the future. The three times are interactive, and this interaction can only happen in the present, therefore the present is not only about what is happening right now, but also the meeting point of the other two, the past and the future.
Whoever lives in the present, disintegrated and with no reference to the past is a living dead: not possessing historical memory, he is a reed agitated by the wind, and as he does not know where he comes from, he does not know who he is, he has no identity. Whoever lives in the present, disintegrated and with no reference to the future lives without a dream, without a project, not knowing where he is going and, “for those who do not know where to go, there are no favorable winds.”
Whoever lives only in the future, loses many opportunities in the present and forgets that for this future to be possible, it must have one foot planted in the present. In other words, there are things in the present that must be done to prepare for the project to be completed in the future: if the future is the roof of the house, then the present is the foundations and walls. A future without a present is a utopia, a fantasy; it is like living in limbo, in an eternal “pause”.
Past
The further backward you can look, the farther forward you will see. Winston Churchill
The heritage of humanity is not made up only of historical monuments, but also of all that the human race is and has done over its 5 million years of existence on this planet. All of this is genetically incorporated inside the DNA of every child who comes into this world, it is something similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, it is part of us and defines us. All of this is the past.
“Libris ex libris fiunt”, when I want to create something new, in any field of knowledge, I have to research what has already been done in that field, and then I add to it my own research. Only God has the capacity to create from nothing.
Faith in the personal God, Creator of everything and everyone, who revealed himself through the prophets and then through his Son, who sent us the Holy Spirit, already has a history. My adherence to this faith makes me a part of this history, gives me an identity and a sense of belonging to a people and a community.
The same happens at an individual level: I know who I am and what I am capable of as I look back and see the performance of my talents and faults in the various circumstances that life has presented me throughout my personal history. It is the acceptance of this past that gives me the sense of self-esteem that I need so to relate properly with myself, with God, with others, and with my surroundings.
Even God, who lives in eternity outside of space and the flowing of time, to show himself to men, made use of his coexistence with them in the past, introducing himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.
Present
Unlike the past and the future, the present is in our hands, in it and only in it are we free to act. The present is the here and now of our life which must be full of action, work, charity and love. For a Christian, to live is to love and to love is to serve, to place oneself at the service of those most in need.
Putting into perspective what Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to do and how much there was to do in face of so much poverty and misery, a journalist once said to her, “What Mother does is like a drop of water in the ocean”, to which she answered with great humility, “yes, but if I didn’t do it, the ocean would have one drop of water less.”
God does not ask us to transform the whole world or to make it better, he only asks for our best. In the parable of the talents, the one who achieved the most was not praised more than the one who achieved less; in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, those who worked the whole day did not receive more than those who worked for only one hour; in the parable of the sower, those that produced 100% were not exalted above those who produced 60% or those who produced only 30%.
Lots or little, all the Lord asks of us is that we bear fruit, that our life be productive: that we leave behind here more than we found, that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem, that is, that our living and acting be a contribution to solving the problems of this world and not a contribution to make them worse.
Future
Faced with the obstinate donkey that did not want to move, a young man tied a carrot to one end of a string and a stick to the other end. He then mounted the donkey and put the carrot two palms in front of the donkey’s nose. Hoping to take a bite of the carrot, the donkey kept walking, not realizing that the carrot was also moving.
Hope is faith on wheels, the dynamic faith that projects us into the future. We all need a “carrot” to keep going. Dream is the engine of life; in other words, what inspires our present is not in the present by itself.
Martin Luther King was one of those who, projected into the future, dedicated his life to the fight for equality between blacks and whites, a dream that he knew would not come to fruition in his lifetime. The day before his assassination, taking inspiration from Moses who after 40 years of walking through the desert saw the Promised Land in which he did not enter, and as if he were standing like Moses on the top of Mount Nebo, King said:
I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
One can only live with significance in the present if this present is impregnated with the future. Living in the present without the presence of the future is to drift aimlessly. And when the present is painful, it is the hope of a better future that helps us to bear it.
Conclusion – Human life results from a balanced and harmonious experience of the three times, among which it takes place. We live in the present and only in the present; but by looking back at the past we discover who we are and the meaning of our life; and by projecting ourselves into the future we find the motivation for our living. The present is just one piece of the puzzle that in its entirety includes the past and the future.
In the present of our lives, when faced with a decision to make, the past speaks of tradition, of our identity, of what we were as history, of what we are as identity, as a person. This past has, therefore, a word to say. For example, if I have reached the end of high school and I need to choose a profession, the past tells me that I am not good in mathematics so my profession must not be one where I have to study math all the time.
Faced with making this decision, the future also has a word to say. If the past tells me where I am, the future tells me where I want to be and the way to get there. “For those who have no sense of direction, don’t know where to go, there are no favorable winds”. In the present, I can ruin the future, which is why the future has a word to say in the present moment, since, contradicting another proverb, not all roads lead to Rome. If the future is a diploma in medicine, the present is hard work and intense studying to get there.
The biblical man – In Hebrew, the word “nikud” means, at the same time, both future and back, while the word “quedem” means both past and orient. Therefore, we can conclude that the biblical man has the past in front of him and the future on his back, that is, he walks with his face and chest facing the past, and with his back to the future.
With eyes on the past because that’s where our roots are, our being, our identity. We live walking towards the future, but we understand our life by looking at the past and with the past we are oriented towards the future. Of the future, we know little or nothing. That is why we walk backwards blindly; the only certainty we have of our future is death, but even that we don’t know how or when or where it will take place. For the pilgrim, the purpose of remembering or looking at the past is not to relive it, but to orient himself in the present, towards the future.
There is no evil that last forever nor good that never ends – We know that life has its ups and downs, like the line in an electrocardiogram or electroencephalogram. We know that on the way to God we can encounter heaven or hell, but we also know that everything is fleeting. So, when we are in the pinnacles of enthusiasm, we must not lose our head, and when we are in the pits of depression, we must not lose hope. At every moment, in every place, we live under the protection of the Lord, therefore we remain constant, patient and faithful.
- The past is the reason, the present our action, the future our motivation.
- The past is the tradition, the present the action, the future the innovation.
- The past is what we were, the present what we are, the future what we will be.
- The past is the being, the present the existing, the future the transcending.
- The past is God the Father who created us out of love, the present is God the Son who saved and saves us, giving us health in the here and now, the future is God the Holy Spirit who animates, inspires and gives us strength in our journey.
- The past is faith, the present charity, the future hope.
Fugitive
And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.’ Genesis 4:10-12
What goes around comes around… Cain is a fugitive because he flees from a past that haunts him in the present. His journey is determined by his pursuers, not by him; that is why he has neither present nor future. He is trapped by something he has done in the past that is omnipresent in the form of remorse, in such a way that it denies him life.
Haunted by his past... It is an expression that denotes well the circumstances in which the fugitive lives. Like a hunted prey, he lives his life fearing being caught. The unresolved past issues haunt him in the present.
Passed waters do not move mills, but contradicting this law of nature, many people have their own mills, that is, their heads grinding with passed waters because they have not apologized or forgiven, or because they were traumatized or abused and have repressed these memories or they pretend that nothing has happened. They live in the past because their life or their present and future are determined by something that happened in the past.
They delude themselves, thinking that the past does not affect them because it is behind them. The truth is that what we know of our past, we can control; what we don’t know, controls us in an unconscious way. Therefore, by projecting the ghosts of the past into the present, we might think that we are fighting against our enemies when objectively we are only fighting windmills, like Don Quixote.
Wanderer
They live as if they will never die and die as if they had never lived. Dalai Lama
Carpe diem (Seize the day) – This became the motto of many people after the blockbuster film “Dead Poets Society”. The wanderer lives installed in the present, but not in the conscious and omniscient present of Eastern philosophies, but in a consumerist, hedonist and unconscious present, and as the expression has it: since we have to die let’s be merry while we live. Without caring for the past that has been and the future that is not yet and may never be, the wanderer walks in the vicious circle of an eternal return.
I make no promises so I won’t fail, we have heard this many times; the wanderer makes no promise to anyone nor does he commit himself to anything or anyone, because this would mean counting on the future. He lives only for the moment. In relation to the past and the future, he takes on the attitude of an ostrich: he buries his head in the sand, repressing and denying his own existence, preferring not to think, and to do this, he abstracts himself by using diversion or work as drug so not to think or face himself. Immersed in pure worldliness he does not need a guide, and takes advice from no one.
Pilgrim
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion. Psalm 84:5-7
In the prehistory of our faith, there were countless pilgrimages: Abraham, a wandering Aramaean who owned only a grave site he bought for his wife and who traveled from his city in Mesopotamia to Canaan, the Hebrew people who left Egypt, the land of slavery, to the Promised Land of freedom and prosperity.
Examples of other pilgrimages are the journeys to Jerusalem for the Passover, and after Christ, the Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Rome and Santiago de Compostela; in the Orthodox tradition, the Russian pilgrim has a book of orthodox spirituality; and in our times, the pilgrimages to Guadalupe in Mexico, Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal, Częstochowa in Poland.
A pilgrimage is a very important Christian practice because somehow it is a parable of life. To live is to go on pilgrimages, the Christian must behave like a pilgrim with the world around him and with his fellow men.
The book of Genesis does not hide the fact that God prefers the shepherd, and thus a nomad, Abel, over his brother Cain, the farmer thus a settler. Unlike the fugitive, the pilgrim lives reconciled with his past, and therefore he does not depend on it; unlike the wanderer, he has a goal, a purpose that he intends to achieve, so he lives the present moment with intensity, always knowing who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. He is never bewildered or disoriented because his life is regulated as if he had a built-in GPS.
Egypt – Desert – Promised Land is the paradigm of humanity of a pilgrim. The pilgrim is always leaving an Egypt and always crossing a desert, and when he arrives at an oasis, he knows that it is not yet the Promised Land, and therefore he continues. The oasis of the Kingdom is already here, but not in its totality, as the Gospel says, and will never be in its totality on earth. For the pilgrim, to seek the kingdom, justice and peace are his main concerns, unlike for the wanderer.
ENERGY
Eros and Thanatos, the life and death instincts, affection and aggression, the yin and yang, the centripetal and centrifugal forces, love and hate, or the positive and negative poles of electricity are all terms to depict the types of energy with which we do everything we do. Without energy, nothing works in a society, and the same is true of us.
In the human being, all acts should be inspired and decided by the Logos, by reason; but the truth is that the instincts of Eros and Thanatos not only provide the energy to realize all acts that reason determines, but they also motivate, nourish and guide many others that subtract from the power of reason. Despite millions of years of evolution from animality, our behaviour is still motivated by instinct more than we would like to admit.
All human acts have a mixture of affection and aggression, even the most polarized, both in affectivity as in education and in aggressiveness as in war, there is always a little of the opposite pole; just as there is a bit of femininity in a man and a bit of masculinity in a woman. It is obvious that the rearing of a son by his parents has more affectivity than aggressiveness; however, an education that consists only of affection would have the tendency to be patronizing. In the education of a child, affectivity, rewards and caresses should be dosed with some aggressiveness, punishment and discipline.
Sublimation
The electric energy produced in a power plant, be it hydroelectric, nuclear or coal-fired, cannot be consumed directly. It has to go through a transformer to reduce it in such a way that it can be used in our homes. The same is true of raw human energy, common to both humans and animals.
In animals, nature takes care of the sublimation of Eros and Thanatos, so that these two energies are only at the service of life; animals mate only to reproduce, and for no other reason, not even for pleasure. They are aggressive when they need to eat or defend their territory, and not outside of these circumstances; they do not have, unlike some humans, the need to kill for pleasure.
In his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argues that both uncontrolled aggressiveness and affectivity, that is, abandoned to themselves have an immeasurable destructive potential. They can destroy what they helped to build. The human being abandoned animality when he gained power over these two forces, when he managed to domesticate them by harnessing their positive aspects.
In this way, the taboo of incest worked as the “halter” for Eros/affectivity/life instinct, prohibiting sexual relationships between people with close blood ties. Without this prohibition, ages of inbreeding would wipe out the human race. The rule of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (which belongs to the world’s oldest code of law, the Hammurabi code) worked as the “halter” for Thanatos/aggressiveness/death instinct, limiting the nature of violence that by itself tends to escalate and spread wildly, leading to destruction.
To sublimate means to divert, substitute or modify the natural expression of an impulse or instinct for an expression that is socially and culturally acceptable and constructive. An example of a destructive energy transformed into a constructive energy is the transformation of a bull used in bullfights into an ox that plows the land and pulls a cart.
Seeing things in this light, the human civilization can be considered as a history of sublimation of Eros and Thanatos, that is, of the intelligent use that humanity has made of these forces or basic instincts. In the same way, our own personal history is also made up of efforts to divert our natural affection and aggression from its natural and primordial target in order to promote the cultivation of human values.
VOCATION
To gain life or to lose life
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? Matthew 16:25-26
It is often heard said about the one who works and walks in a constant hustle and bustle, running around “earning a living”. In this sense, earning a living is synonymous with a breadwinner; but to earn a livelihood and to live a life are not the same thing. Just as living and being alive are not the same thing.
Those who spend their lives (time and energy) seeking livelihood are different from the rest of living beings on this planet; the gazelles and lions, the tigers and leopards, or all the living beings except man spend their days searching for means to stay alive or to survive; animals do not live because they do not exercise any power or control over their own lives: they survive or simply are alive.
Unlike other living beings, human beings have the power and control over their own lives, they can do with it whatever they want; they can make it into a heaven or a hell, depending on how they manage the time and energy given to them.
Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. (….) The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself: (...) You have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God. Luke 12:15-17, 19-21
There are people who in their lifetime accumulated enough goods for two or three lives…, but are they going to gain these extra lives or even be able to extend this life after they have accumulated enough goods? No, life is not about earning a living. Life is not about fattening up but of thinning down, life is not about winning, but about losing; life is not a centripetal force, sweeping inward or to each of his own, but rather of centrifugal force, sharing, giving yourself to others for a cause. Therefore, anachronistically, life is lost when you keep it and is gained when you give it away.
Your life does not revolve around yourself, you were born for a mission
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Mark 10:45
For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. Luke 22:27
No one ever asked Jesus what was the purpose of his life, but if someone had, He would have given the answer above.
My life for others is an absolute value, but for myself it is a relative value; absolute for me is the reason why I live because my life does not revolve around me. If I were the reason for my own life, then living would mean surviving, that is, maintaining vital functions, or preserving life. But this is not true about human life; life is time, space and energy dedicated to a cause.
Beethoven’s life was focused on music; Picasso’s on painting, Einstein’s on physics, Nelson Mandela’s on equality between blacks and whites. The life of Jesus, the Son of God, was focused on the salvation of mankind. No one is happier than the one who is useful and no one is more useful than the one who loves and understands that to love is wanting and seeking the good of others.
All these people became famous, popular, heroes, eternal, because they spent their lives cultivating human values, like music, painting, social equality… As we’ve said before, human values are limitless in the space-time continuum, they transcend all places, cultures, and times; in other words, they are eternal.
So, when you spend your life, your temporality, cultivating eternal values, you attain eternity. Whereas, on the contrary, when you spend your life cultivating temporary values, like power or wealth, you are already cultivating death, and eventually when you die, that is the same as eternal death.
Talents are like the gifts of the Holy Spirit: they are directed not for your own personal fulfillment and gain, but to the service of the community. It is to the extent that you are useful to the community that you consider yourself valid within.
Talents, the tools of life
God who is the architect of our life has conceived a project for each one of us. No one comes into the world without a project. Through interaction with Him in prayer and in interpreting the signs of times, we must find out what project God has in mind for each one of us, and for which He has equipped us with enough talents to carry it out within the scope of a viable life.
Therefore, instead of envying other people’s talents, as teenagers do by covering the walls in their bedrooms with posters of “idols”, let us look at ourselves and discover what talents we have. There may be some hidden talent that we never thought we had… Just as the situation can create the thief, great challenges can create great men, when they push forward and risk it all. It is only by risking that they know whether or not they are up for the job.
Those who do not take risks do not gain: a talent that is not used is a talent that is hopelessly lost. Talents not found or used do not lead us to the purpose that God has set for us, and in not reaching this goal, our life has been futile. What has no use is garbage and what is garbage is burned – this is the meaning of hell.
3 attitudes towards space: settler – tourist – pilgrim
For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Hebrews 13:14
If in the manner we relate to time we can be fugitives or wanderers, then in the manner we relate to space, the world around us, we can be settlers or tourists. Settlers, tourists and pilgrims have in common the fact that they do not come from the place they live in during their lifetime. They are different, however, in that they relate differently to the environment in which they live.
In other words, the settler as well as the tourist and the pilgrim are alike in that they are all from another place or country that is different from where they live in the here and now of their lives, but they differ from one another in the way they relate to the people and the world around them. People were created to be loved, things were created to be used. Only the pilgrim embodies this truth in his life, since the settler uses people and loves things, and the tourist uses both things and people.
Settlers
Veni vidi vincit, (I came, I saw, I conquered) as the conqueror Caesar Augustus would say. The settler comes to conquer and possess both people and things. He conquers and exploits everything and everyone without scruples, even the resources of the planet, it matters not to him the ecology. In this sense, he has the mentality of the donkey that said, “After I die, let there be no more grass growing on earth”. He also exploits others, regulating himself by the only rule he knows: profit and personal gain.
The settler came to stay, he has no plan to move on, and clings to things and people like a tick. He is sedentary, no longer seeking, no longer walking, and lives installed in life as if he has already reached the Promised Land. He enjoys everything that life has to offer him as if he were never going to die. God rejected Cain, a settler, and accepted Abel, a shepherd.
Tourists
Unlike the settler, the tourist lives superficially, since for him everything has the same value, things and people alike. He tries to amuse himself, and is not interested in owning anything or anyone, only the photos of everything and everyone he has collected. For the tourist, everything is a part of the landscape, the value of things is measured by the potential for fun or satisfaction of his five senses. Therefore, everything that is exotic, erotic, unusual and eccentric, and produces strong emotions and spews adrenaline is what is valuable to him.
The tourist does not penetrate into reality and sees the world as if it were a theater that entertains him, but he does not know nor cares to know what goes on behind the scenes. He doesn’t commit to anything or anyone, looks for distraction and runs away from anything that has to do with suffering.
Pilgrims
Once upon a time there was a man who would fetch water from the river every day with a bucket in each hand. One of the buckets had a hole in it so that when the man got home, there was only half of the water left in it. For this reason this faulty bucket felt sad, inferior and even ashamed in front of the other bucket. When it said this to its master, the latter smiled and said: "Have you not noticed that the path on your side is full of flowers and there are none on the other side? As I knew that your bucket was pierced, I sowed flowers on your side and you were in charge of watering them every day..."
The pilgrim does not own things or people like the settler, nor does he use and throw them away like the tourist; he is not installed in the here and now like the settler nor does he walk disinterested like the tourist. In his journey, he commits himself, giving himself totally to people and to concrete human causes, but as he does not try to be loved, but to love, he gives himself without being tied to the people he loves.
Many of the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela were young and left behind music and joy wherever they went; the Portuguese language, the Galician-Portuguese, was born from these canticles about friend, love, mockery and swear words. On the other hand, the Portuguese Way to Santiago de Compostela is embellished with bridges and Romanesque churches and the French Way by churches and great Gothic cathedrals.
After Easter, it is customary in northern Portugal for the parish priest to visit one by one the families of his parish. It is a great feast for the members of the extended family who go to each other’s homes to kiss the Easter cross, the glorious cross of resurrection. For this occasion, people give an “Easter gift”, in money or goods, to the priest in recognition for his parish work throughout the year.
There was a priest in my town, Loriga, who received as much as he gave away, in the houses of the rich he received money which he then left in the houses of the poor; this was his Easter visit, he took from the rich and gave to the poor, thus contributing in this way, at least on one day the year, to the equality of Christians in his parish.
An American on pilgrim through the Holy Land visited the house of a rabbi, and spent some time in conversation with him. While they were talking, he noted that the rabbi lived in destitute, with only one bed where he sat and slept. At one point, the American asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” and the rabbi answered with a question, “and where is yours?” “Mine? I am a pilgrim,” said the American. “So am I,” replied the rabbi.
God gives each one of us the time, energy, resources and talents so that life is viable and meaningful to ourselves and to those around us. Therefore, our self-fulfillment and happiness depend exclusively on us.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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