Mater Aeterna is the Universal story of the man in this World who has to make a choice. Will he be brought down by the pessimism of the Western European culture or will he take the risk to believe in something unknown, something better? Is he willing to try to believe in the positive inspite of everything he has been through, or is he only indifferently facing his own downfall? The image which author Jef Mellemans uses is the figure of a mother who is witnessing the execution of her own son. The resemblance with the Catholic passion is meant. The mother cannot just exept this tragic event. Her emotion struggle against this inhumanity and she decides to do the impossible: she decides to walk back her life, until the time were her son was born. This way the gospel is been told in a kind of opposite order, but this without an explicit connection. During her journey, she is being faced with all the essential questions of life, and this starting off with her personal experiences. Like the Jews from the old testament, who arrive from Egypt in the promised land, she can only bring down the walls of the city with violence. Everybody is telling her not to follow this road, and wants to convince her of the pointlessness of her choice. She knows anyhow what will happen at the end? But the mother chooses for the life and gives birth to her son again. Her love is stronger than every mood of downfall. The hope that lives inside her is bigger than her fear. This composition was premiered on the 5th of November 2008 by 4 soloists, accompanied by the choir Molto Cantabile from Luzern, the Luzerner Kantorei and Musik Muri in Muri, Switzerland.