PROCESS MANDALA 1

A 1637-1638 painting by Nicolas Poussin. The translation of the phrase is "even in Arcadia, there am I...". The usual interpretation is that "I" refers to Death, and Arcadia means an utopian land. It would thus be a memento mori.

"The discovery of art has been the creative response of humankind to the shocking fact of mortality..."

"At an early stage of his intellectual development man deems himself naturally immortal... [an] illusion, so flattering to human wishes and hopes... but in time the sad truth of human mortality was borne in upon our primitive philosopher with a force of demonstration no prejudice could resist and no sophistry dissemble...'

"Upset by the fact that the wounds which she had cut into her breast were beginning to fade, she attempted to reopen the original wounds on more than one occasion using a knife... in the midst of the peace and great joy that this great act had procured her, the generous and fervent Margaret Mary experienced one regret, namely, that the letters of the holy name of Jesus, which she had engraven on her heart and which she wished to be as lasting as her love began, after some time, to grow faint and disappear... she tried once or twice to renew them by opening the lines with a knife; but not succeeding according to her liking, she determined to burn her chest with fire..."

The devotion to the Sacred Heart (Sacratissimum Cor Iesu) is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind..."