Evil and Its Origins

See also: Sin, Fault, Blasphemy, Satan, Pain, Suffering, To Suffer, Good.

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God drives Lucifer and the rebellious Angels out of Heaven - Illustrated Catechism of Necessary Truths, page 4.

Following the work of Maria Valtorta, God did not create Evil; it is Lucifer who generated it by his disobedience at the beginning of times. Because of this, Hatred appeared, and eternal Hell was created. Due to the fault of our first parents, Adam and Eve, evil and death entered the earth, ravaging it. From that moment, the Christ and Lucifer, now Satan, dispute the possession of Souls. This Struggle will reach its climax at the end of times before Evil, Satan, and his worshippers are defeated forever.

God does not use Evil to tempt us; He only tempts us with beneficial gifts. It is up to us to grasp them.

Heaven at the Origin

Originally, everything was order in creation. But order does not exclude freedom: God created nothing that is slave. On the contrary, perfect freedom is found in order because it excludes constraints born from fear of intrusion, fear of aggression, the Struggle Against opposite wills destructive to one another.

Such was the entire universe before Lucifer abused his freedom to provoke in himself the disorder of passions—and that, by his own will.

His original name, Lucifer, means "the bearer of Light." In other words, the bearer of the Light, that is God, since God is Light. He was an angel, the most beautiful of the Angels. His perfect spirit was second only to God. Of all things existing, he was the second in beauty, the pure pure mirror reflecting the unbearable Beauty of God. His mission among men would have been to execute the will of God, the messenger of the decrees of goodness that the Creator transmitted to his [[Children, Childhood|blessed children without sin]], to lead them ever higher to His likeness. The bearer of light would have spoken to men through the rays of this divine light he brought, and since they were without fault, men would have understood these flashes of harmonious words, full of love and joy.

Effortlessly completed, because done in order, creation would have continued without effort from the creatures if the disorder had not come to break the harmony of Heaven with Lucifer’s rebellion, and that of Eden with the rebellion of Man-Adam.

The Sin of Lucifer Who Becomes Satan

Lucifer, the "bearer of light," believed himself to be Light itself. But "bearing light" is something different from "being the Light." The Light before whom all Creation bows is the Son of God, the Word of the Father, "through whom all things were made." The second Person of the Trinity "is the perfection of the Three summarized in one Person. An infinite perfection before whom the heavenly armies bow." He has nothing equal or common with the angelic creature that was Lucifer originally.

The archangel Lucifer loved incompletely. Pride took up space within him, a place where love could not exist. He saw himself in God, he saw himself in himself, he saw himself in his companions—because God enveloped him with His light and delighted in the splendor of His archangel—and moreover, since the Angels worshipped him as the most perfect mirror of God, he admired himself. Present at God's side from the first acts of Creation, he desired that Creation say of him what is said of the Incarnate Incarnation in the prologue of John: "All things were made through him." From that moment, the archangel becomes sacrilegious, murderer and predator.

He was to admire only God, but he admired himself. In every creature, all good and bad forces are present and stir until one side prevails to produce Good or evil. Lucifer attracted Pride.

It is through this breach of Pride that his destructive depravity entered. Because of it, he could neither understand nor accept the Christ-Love; the synthesis of infinite, unique, and triune Love. The fact that nowadays there spreads the heresy which denies the divine humanity of the second Person to make him a mere good and wise man can easily be explained thanks to this key: lack of love in the Heart of man and his incapacity to love.

Since he knew God's future wonders, Lucifer wanted to take the place of God. His troubled spirit already made him see himself as the leader of future men, adored as the supreme power. He thought: "I know God's secret. I know the words. His plan is known to me. I can do everything he can. As I have presided over the first operations of creation, I can succeed. I am." This word, which only God can say, was the cry that marked the ruin of the Prideful one. And he became Satan.

He, who was created to carry the light and the messages of God, freely and willingly chose to be unfaithful to the Lord his Creator and his Grace. It was this delusion of Pride, this presumption to Believe himself God in place of the Son of God and thus not bound to obedience and ADoration, that struck down the rebel. If he had been all love, there would have been no room within him for anything but love. But there was room for Pride, which could be called the disorder of the intellect.

Just as God wanted the archangel to stand by His side from the first acts of creation and know the destiny of love, so He wanted him to know the necessity his sin would impose on God: the Incarnation and Death of a God to counterbalance the sin that Lucifer would create if he did not overcome his Pride. He showed him the vision. The first annihilation of God is found in this act of gentle and supplicating conviction toward the Prideful one.

It was an act of love. But Lucifer was already Satanized. Instead of love, he saw only fear, weakness, an affront, and a threat. So he opened hostilities against God by saying: "You are? So am I. What you have done is for me. There is no God. And if there is one, it is I. I adore myself. I abhor you. I refuse to recognize as Lord the one who does not know how to overcome me. You should not have created me so perfect if you did not want me to set myself as a rival. Now I am, and I oppose you. Triumph over me if you can. But I do not fear you. I too will create, and your creation will tremble because of me. I hate you and want to destroy what is yours to create upon its ruins what will be mine. I know and recognize no other power than myself. From now on, I worship only myself."

The Birth of Evil, Hatred, and Hell

The entire Creation then convulsed horrified at the infamy of these sacrilegious words, a convulsion like none will be seen again at the end of Creation. From it was born Hell: the reign of Hatred.

Lucifer made his Pride a weapon of seduction: He seduced his less attentive companions. He turned them away from the contemplation of God as the supreme Beauty.

This Revolt killed charity, order and harmony in him and his supporters.

It is from the incubation of Pride that Evil was born. Evil is a force that arose spontaneously, as certain monstrous illnesses arise in the healthiest body.

Hell—the place of eternal and inconceivable torments into which those who live in hatred of the Lord and His Law tumble—was created because of him, the rebellious Archangel.

With his supporters, Lucifer was struck down by God and overcome by faithful Angels. Struck down, because now deprived of the power of his state of Grace, and “cast down to the bottom of the abyss” where his terrible Fire of hatred, his light and flame now horrible, so different from the flame of Grace and love received at creation, ignited an eternal Fire of unimaginable atrocity.

When Lucifer’s sin irreparably upset the order of paradise, a great horror struck all Angels. The perfect charity that previously existed alone had just fallen into an abyss exhaling the stench of hell.

The absolute charity of the Angels was destroyed, and Hatred appeared. Frightened, the faithful Angels wept for God's pain and His wrath. They wept for the violated Peace of paradise, for the broken order, and for the frailty of spirits. They no longer felt certain of being blameless due to their pure spirit: Pride was latent and could develop.

Satan Contaminates the Earth

Evil thus existed before man was created. God had cast the cursed Incubator out of paradise. But unable to contaminate paradise, he contaminated the earth.

It is indeed through him that all evil came…

At the bottom of the abyss where he had fallen, ugly forever, Lucifer, now Satan, thirsted for vengeance. His first act of vengeance struck Adam and Eve. His poisoned tooth placed the mark of bestiality upon the perfection of creation, communicating his own appetite for lust, vengeance, and Pride.

By resisting Satan’s seductions, our first ancestors would have imitated the good Angels vainly tempted by Lucifer during his rebellion, and they would have obtained an increase of Grace.

The impulses and instincts of human nature were originally ordered and good elements. They were arranged According to a reciprocal harmony, well suited to the final purpose for which man was created. Their disorder was the creation of Lucifer, the rebel.

The sin Against love, that is, the Pride of intellect and Heart, from which innocent man-Adam became guilty, the terrible sin of the self that wants “to become like God” (Genesis 3:5), was created by Lucifer who later seduced man into the same sin, making him like himself in his rebellion Against the Lord.

For centuries upon centuries, man Struggles Against the infernal venom, and Satan perpetuates an endless series of crimes of vengeance. No one escapes the disorder caused by Lucifer and our first parents. The Christ himself had to face them.

The sins of Lucifer, Adam, and later Judas of Kerioth are that they wanted everything because they had received much. They believed themselves "gods" because God had chosen them, sure they could To Save without any merit other than the love granted by God. Thus, they committed an extremely grave sin. For if the Goodness of God is perfect and infinite, it is neither foolishness nor injustice.

God Keeps Adam From Damning Himself for Eternity

But God wished to prevent Adam from risking repeating Lucifer’s sin, who became Satan for refusing to adore Love made flesh. If God had offered the future Christ to Adam, Adam might also have refused to adore the future Christ, the true Synthesis of Trinitarian Love.

Too often man curses fruitlessly the first sin; he blasphemes Against God by accusing Him of being a reckless Lord who subjected man to a Temptation stronger than he. But what would have happened if man, instead of yielding to the Temptation that urged him to Believe that by eating the forbidden fruit he would become like God, had come, without any tempter, to Believe himself God because without sin, without pain, without death?

There would then have been no redemption because man would have been a new Lucifer. It would even have been a legion without number of demons because, over the centuries, humanity would have multiplied by all procreations; it would then not be just one man and one Woman, but all of mankind who would have sinned through this sacrilegious heresy and the human race would have perished entirely in an infernal punishment.

Lucifer arrogantly claimed to redeem man himself, judging that his likeness to God was not just a participation of nature, but substantial, thus making him equal to God in knowledge, power, and beauty. He thus gravely offended the Holy Spirit, dispenser of lights, truths, and wisdom that reside in God. Yet the sins Against The Holy Spirit, committed by Lucifer and his rebel companions, as well as by many men, are not forgiven.

Satan’s Struggle Against Christ Until the End of Times

Since his fall, Satan wants to have his own people to oppose the People of God. He pursues this goal relentlessly, out of hatred for God and hatred for the creatures God loves as a Father. The intelligence Lucifer had before being struck down—a very sharp intelligence, fitting for prince of angelic populations—as well as his powers, he retained even after God’s divine strike. He now uses them to achieve his goals. He spies on every action of man, listens to every word. From every word spoken and every action done he profits. He uses the individual's physical constitution, illnesses, misfortunes, studies, affections, occupations, and all he finds fit to be seeded, to sow his discord. He stirs up phenomena capable of seducing us and leading us into error.

These are the wonders on which Christ warned us by announcing the last times, warning humanity Against those same wonders and Against the voices of false christs and false prophets who will appear here and there.

Satan is the “Opposite”: the opposite of God to whom he is opposed. Each of his Actions is the antithesis of God’s Actions. All his machinations aim to push men to oppose God. That is who Satan is. He opposes the three Theological Virtues with the triple concupiscence1 John 2:15-17 “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of wealth,” sometimes summarized by sex, power, and money. Saint Paul identifies this triple concupiscence with original sin (Cf. Galatians 5:16,17,24 and Ephesians 2:3. See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2514 and following.</ref>. To the four cardinal Virtues and all others originating from God, he opposes the factory of his horrible vices.

Lucifer uses his cunning to deceive and his great intelligence to devise when and how to provoke God's suffering by the loss of a creature. He never wastes his time uselessly. Omnipresent on earth, he works among the multitude.

The little attention man pays him and his rare desire for Good leave Satan almost omnipotent over creatures, yet he must carefully calculate his time and not waste a moment to work effectively. His infernal profit is to increase his infernal forces with treasures stolen from God: Souls.

Among the many things the current world, filled with Pride and unbelief, denies is the Presence of the Demon and his still immense power. Logically, Atheism which denies God also denies Lucifer, this creature of God who became rebel, adversary of God, the Tempter, the Envious, the Wicked, the Tireless, the Impersonator of God.

Since having been cast into the bottom of the abyss where there is only Darkness and horror, Satan wants to establish a copy of the heavenly court there, have his own ministers and Angels, his subjects and sons. When he manifests to mislead us, he disguises himself as a spirit of light. His appearance and thoughts are hidden under ornaments copied from the Most High.

This is how Satan approaches Maria Valtorta: On July 4, 1944 he impersonated the Voice inspiring her to curse those who had harmed her. Another time, he pushed her to divert the work to his profit and personal glory or planted Doubt about the origin of visions.

Satan has not lost his powerful intelligence just because he passed from archangel to demon: on the contrary, he uses his extremely keen intelligence for evil instead of Good, as he would have used it if he had remained archangel.

The Temporary Triumph of Satan

His infernal craftiness and Satanic intelligence are incessantly at work to increase his prey, opposing the work of Salvation of God. His craft and intelligence would not prevail if human beings had the Blood of the Redeemer and an honest will. Humans lack too much to have weapons with which to oppose the Beast, and it knows it and acts openly without disguising itself with false appearances.

If people knew how to reflect, they would strive to be good to bend goodness to their Confession. Instead, Saltfishness dominates them. Therefore, prayers, Sacraments and sacramentals, made impure by Saltfishness, have no power Against Lucifer who disrupts the world.

All humanity is guilty. But it includes sinners and impious. The sinner is simply a sinner, but the impious brings sin to a demonic perfection. For in evil, the demon knows how to achieve perfection, and his most faithful Disciples know how to do the same as their master.

Those who want to recognize no law, neither natural nor human, are Lucifers, the Lucifers of the Earth. Over the years, their number increases instead of decreasing as it should after the dissemination of the Gospel, its tireless preaching, and the civilization it spreads. Peace, justice, and light are promised to men of good will. But they are of bad will.

The Beast is sated and throbbing. It is its hour of celebration. But it seeks the shadow to act. It hates the Light, it who was once Lucifer! It hypnotizes those not marked by the Blood of the Redeemer. It increases its efforts because it knows this is its hour and that the hour of Christ approaches when it will be defeated forever.

Just as God gave each nation its guardian angel, so Lucifer gave it his demon. The order given by Lucifer is the same for all demons. Hence it can be understood that Satan’s reign is not divided and therefore endures.

This order is summed up thus: "Sow horror, despair, errors so that peoples detach themselves from God by cursing Him."

The demons obey and sow horror and despair, extinguish faith, strangle hope, destroy charity. On the ruins, they sow hatred, lust, Atheism. They sow hell and succeed because they find the field already fertile.

My Angels also Struggle to defend the country I assigned them. But my Angels do not find fertile ground.

The demons, installed as masters in the Hearts, lead nations to death. And among certain peoples, there are few Hearts not the dwelling of demons: countless demonic legions that maneuver entire nations as puppets. “And how can I reign where Hearts have become the dwelling of the children of Lucifer?” Jesus wonders.

Lucifer rejoices in these times, in these Hours of glory that belong to him. He stands upon his throne—he, the cursed, the struck down, driven away by God—he stands on the throne men have raised for him, and the Lamb is offered to his infernal derision. To his horrible mockery is offered the One he never could defeat, the One he never could penetrate, the One who defeated him a hundred and a thousand times, the One who has forced him to admit defeat for twenty centuries, the One who will defeat him until the end, freeing by His infinite power the spirits of good will.

He will be defeated. But meanwhile he appears as the victor. And the Sacrament of Sacraments, this mystery of love to which even the most seraphic human love fails to render worthy honor, this mystery of love is delivered to Satan by men as a means for his ephemeral triumph.

The Final Confrontation

“It is a Struggle between Heaven and Hell,” Jesus said to Maria Valtorta. “You are only a misleading screen. Behind your troops fight Angels and demons. Behind your pretexts hides the true reason: the Struggle of Satan Against Christ.

It is one of the first selections of humanity, whose last hour approaches, to separate the harvest of the elect from the harvest of the reprobate. Unfortunately, the harvest of the elect is meager compared to the other.

When Christ comes to defeat the eternal adversary in His Prophet, He will find few marked by the Cross in their spirit”.

The first time, to Save the Earth, God sent His purifying waters: the Flood. The second time, He sent a bath of blood, and what blood: that of His Son! None of these Purifications served to transform humans into children of God. Now God the Father is weary of the human race, for humans have preferred hell to heaven. Lucifer, their ruler, tortures them to push them to blaspheme Against the Triune God and thus make them his children forever.

Christ wished a second Passion to Save the world, but God the Father did not allow it: it would be useless. Christ will come only at the last hour.

When that time comes, a great number of stars will be taken away by the Hands of Lucifer who, to win, needs to diminish the lights of Souls. This may happen because not only laypeople, but also members of the clergy will have lost the firmness of faith, charity, strength, purity, detachment from worldly seductions necessary to remain in the orbit of God’s light. These stars mentioned by the Apocalypse are therefore those Jesus called “the Salt of the earth and the light of the world,” His ministers.

“Woe to those who will see me at that hour after having chosen Lucifer for their lord!” Jesus told Maria Valtorta. “My Angels will not need to carry weapons to win the battle Against the antichrists. My gaze will suffice.

“You will understand who God is and who Lucifer is only when you are in the throes of torture,” He continued. “A terrible lesson! And the more you sin, the fiercer his grip will be because there are limits even to my unlimited but intelligent Goodness. Remember this.

“Pray therefore, you who are good, that the world may die only at the appointed hour. Pray that God will not send His justicers to strike it, as He did with Lucifer and Adam. For certainly, God’s decrees are eternal. But they can be modified when His justice and honor impose on Love to Recall to creatures that there is only one God and that no one is greater than Him. This for the world”.

The End of the World

What will happen then?

Just as we seek to pass on some wealth to our children for a better life, so Jesus urges us to do everything to pass on to them an inheritance of spiritual strength that they can develop and multiply to have it in abundance when the hailstorm of the last battles of the world and mad Lucifer lashes humanity in such a way that one wonders whether hell might not be better.

Hell! Humanity will experience it. For those who remain faithful to the Spirit, paradise will come after, as well as the Earth which is not earth: the Kingdom of heaven.

The archangel Michael, who defeated Lucifer and guards Paradise, will appear as a celestial sign in the last times. At this time Israel will join the Rome of Christ, so that there will no longer be two branches of the people of God—the blessed and the cursed because of its deicide—but a single trunk called of Christ, because it will live in Him.

Then the mystery of God will be fulfilled. “Then you will know God,” Jesus told Maria Valtorta. “All the men of the earth, all, from Adam to the last-born, gathered like grains of sand on the dunes of the eternal beach, will see the Lord God, Creator, Judge, King.

“Yes, you will see that God whom you loved, blasphemed, followed, mocked, blessed, vilified, served, fled. You will see Him. Then you will know how Good He deserved your love and how Good it was to serve Him.

“Oh! Joy of those who consumed themselves in loving and obeying Him! Oh! Terror of those who were His Judases, His Cains, those who preferred to follow The Antichrist and the Seducer instead of the Word made man in whom is Redemption, Christ, Way of the Father; Jesus, very holy Truth; the Word, true Life”.

Good will return to the source from which it came. Evil will be cast down where it was already cast down at the moment of Lucifer’s Revolt and whence it came out to disturb Adam’s weakness through the seduction of the senses and Pride.

Just as love, hatred is eternal: it has been eternal since the moment it appeared in the cursed Spirit of Lucifer and his followers. It is eternal in hell, which from then on existed and will never end. It is eternal in the Hearts of men who have chosen it as their queen and who will carry it with them beyond time.

These two eternities: love and hatred, the Expiator and sin, Jesus and Lucifer, will be, in a continual being, the King of heaven and the king of the Abyss, each at the head of his people. After time, hatred will continue to blaspheme in the people of the cursed. For the sin of Lucifer there is no pardon.

If the great Seducer was able to penetrate sensible paradise, he will not be able to insinuate himself into celestial paradise. Lucifer, already cast down from heaven into hell because of his rebellion, will be buried and become "nothingness" at the end of times, before the new heaven and new earth come, so that he can no longer act, harm, or cause suffering to those who, after overcoming all kinds of Trials and Purifications, live in the Lord.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

Misfortune and Suffering Endured

• Is pain always an evil? - No, friend, it is an evil from the human point of view.
• Suffering has not been useless. I believe, I know it has served you more than an entire year of teaching. Suffering, meditating on the evil man can do to his fellow man, pity, faith, hope, charity you had to exercise, and by yourself, matured you like children becoming men...

Temptation, Choosing to Do or Not Do

• What is obedience to God’s commandments? It is Good, because God commands only Good. What is disobedience? It is evil, for it plants in the Soul rebellious feelings, fertile ground for Satan’s work.
• We have everything in us: Good and evil. We carry them both. On Good blows the breath of God. On evil blows Satan
• In all Actions of man there is a possibility of Good or evil depending on how they are performed.
• All the germs of evil and all Aspirations to Good lie dormant in man by the loving will of God, by the evil will of Satan who suggests, tempts, excites, while God attracts, consoles, loves. Satan tempts to seduce. God works to conquer.
• It is always the will of man that makes Good or evil be done. And upon man's will, God’s Will projects its lights and Satan’s will his poisonous vapors. It belongs to man to Homelir the light or the poison and become just or sinner.
• Evil is not just not doing it; you must also not desire to do it.

The Evil Actions Caused to Others

• The reflection of Good and evil on the Face

Evil Personified

See also related entries: Satan

• Evil is a force that was born by itself, spontaneously
• I had dedicated myself to God from the first Age because the light of the Most High had fully illuminated for me the cause of the world's evil and I had wished, as far as it was in my power, to erase from myself the imprint of Satan.
• Evil is Against Good, and I must conquer in everyone evil to put Good there... and not all want it...
• But when will Evil cease to harm? Perhaps it will blunt its arrows Against your Sacrifice? Will it persuade itself that it is defeated? - Never. It will always believe it triumphs despite denials given by the just.

In Other Works by Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of May 22: Evil always comes under the ephemeral and deceptive appearance of human profit. Never be mistaken. The true profit is supernatural. Trials are the currency to acquire it. (page 302)

The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950

• February 18, 1974: "Is Temptation, in this case, sin or glory? Good or evil? It is not sin. And Good that it is an element of evil, it can turn into a means of Good and glory thanks to the free will with which man resists it […] Remember also that man's life serves to expiate the evil he commits".

In Fundamental Christian Texts

In the Bible

• For I know that in me—that is, in my flesh—nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I want, I do not do; but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Misfortune and Suffering Endured

• Experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death seem to contradict the Good News, they can shake faith and become a Temptation for it 164
• Faith in God the Almighty Father can be tested by the experience of evil and suffering. 272 and following
• Providence and the Scandal of evil 309 and following
• No one escapes the experience of suffering, evils in nature and especially the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? 385
• The triumph of God over the Revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment 677

Temptation, Choosing to Do or Not Do

• By receiving holy Baptism which purifies us, the forgiveness we receive is so full and whole that there is absolutely nothing left to erase, either from original fault or from faults committed by our own will, nor any punishment to suffer for their expiation (...). Nevertheless, the grace of Baptism does not deliver anyone from all infirmities of nature. On the contrary, we still have to fight the movements of concupiscence which never cease to lead us to evil" 978
• It is through faith in the Good News and Baptism that one renounces evil and acquires salvation 1427
• Every man experiences evil, around him and within himself 1606
• Man knows the Voice of God urging him "to do good and avoid evil" 1706 and following
• As long as it has not definitively fixed itself in its ultimate Good which is God, freedom implies the possibility to choose between Good and evil, hence the possibility to grow in perfection or to fail and sin. 1732
• The objective rules of morality state the rational order of Good and evil, attested by Conscience. 1751
• Present in the Heart of the person, Moral Conscience enjoins at the opportune moment to do good and avoid evil. 1777
• Moral law forbids the paths of evil that turn away from God and His love. 1950
• The Decalogue is a light offered to the Conscience of every man to show him God's Call and ways, and protect him Against evil. 1962

The Evil Actions Caused to Others

• "Those who have done good will rise to life, those who have done evil, to condemnation." 998
• Interior penance is a radical reorientation of all life, a return, a conversion toward God with all our Heart, cessation of sin, aversion to evil, with repugnance toward the evil Actions we have committed. 1431
• Israel experiences that illness is mysteriously linked with sin and evil. 1502
• The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of future evil. This movement ends in sadness for present evil or anger opposing it. 1765
• It is never permitted to do evil so that good may result. 1789 and following
• Like the first sin, sin is disobedience, a Revolt Against God, by the will to become "like gods," knowing and determining Good and evil. 1850
• Desiring revenge for evil of one who must be punished is illicit. 2302
• When wishing grave evil on the Neighbor, envy is a mortal sin. 2539

Evil Personified

• Jesus’ priestly prayer (at the Last Supper) is inspired by the great petitions of the Our Father: […] deliverance from evil. 2750
• "But deliver us from Evil." 2850 and following

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