I would like to bring to the readers’ attention to the implications of the name given to the new hospital – “Mater Dei”. It is very sad that so many people look at the billboard and only a very few understand the meaning of the words “Mater Dei”.

Let’s begin with the name. “Mater Dei” means “Mother of God” in Latin. Very few people who believe in the Bible deny that God never had a beginning and an end. So some people might wonder about this title and say, “If God has a mother, then he was created”. Thus all this leads to a confusing and contradictory understanding of the Bible and its message. We all know that God is the creator of all things, and we find several passages in the Bible stating this, like in Isaiah 40:28: “Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding.”. If, according to the Bible, God created all things, how come he has a mother? How was he created? Jesus was God as clearly seen in Philippians 2:5-8 “5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took on him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.”

Jesus was also a human being; he suffered hunger and thirst; he wept and worried about all the other things humans do and feel, apart from sin.

So this clearly shows that Jesus had two natures – that of man, and that of God. And this where many people misinterpret the Bible – God gave Jesus the nature of God, and Mary (God gave her instructions when he sent an angel) gave Jesus the nature of men. Nowhere in the Bible will you find “Mary mother of Jesus Christ”, but only “Mary mother of Jesus”, like in John 2:1 “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there… ” .

Thus the name given to the new hospital is wrong .

Charles Borg