That is the register the Church actually uses here, and it is worth knowing before anything else. Scripture’s own infertility stories are angry ones.
Historical Context
Hannah’s Prayer
Hannah is the person in Scripture who most resembles anyone reading this. She is infertile, mocked for it at home, and goes to the shrine at Shiloh to pray — and the priest assumes she is drunk, because she is praying silently and her lips are moving.
O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant,
and remember me, and not forget your servant,
but will give to your servant a son,
then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life.
— after 1 Samuel 1:11
Two things in that passage are worth more than most of what gets written about infertility. The first is that Hannah’s prayer is a bargain, and Scripture does not disapprove. The second is Eli’s mistake — she was praying so hard it looked like drunkenness. If your praying about this has stopped being decorous, you are in good company.
Prayer to Saint Gerard Majella
Gerard is the patron of expectant mothers and of childbirth, and he has a page of his own on this site. He died in 1755; his feast is 16 October.
O good Saint Gerard, powerful intercessor before God
and wonder-worker of our day,
confidently I call upon you and seek your aid.
On earth you always fulfilled God’s designs;
help me now to do the holy will of God.
Implore the Master of Life, from whom all parenthood proceeds,
to render me fruitful in offspring,
that I may raise up children to God in this life
and heirs to the kingdom of his glory in the world to come.
Amen.
A Prayer While We Are Still Trying
Lord, another month has gone.
I am tired of hoping on a schedule.
I am tired of being asked, and of not being asked.
Give us a child, if that is what you are doing.
And if it is not, tell us sooner rather than later,
because the waiting is its own injury.
Keep this from getting between us.
Let us be kind to each other tonight.
Amen.
A Prayer After a Diagnosis
Father, a doctor has told us what the odds are
and they are not good.
I do not want to be told this is a blessing in disguise.
Sit with us in it.
Take the blame out of this — mine, and theirs, and each other’s.
Show us what to do next, and give us the courage for it,
whether that is another treatment, or adoption,
or a life that looks different from the one we planned.
Do not let this be the thing that defines us.
Amen.
A Prayer to Carry a Child to Term
For anyone who has conceived and lost, which is a different grief again and often a silent one.
Lord, you have given us this beginning.
Hold it.
Let this child take root and stay.
Quiet the fear that comes every time I go to the bathroom.
St Gerard, patron of mothers carrying children, pray for us.
And for the ones we have already lost —
keep them, and let us meet them.
Amen.
Treatment, IVF, and Where the Church Draws the Line
You will meet this question, so here it is plainly, with the paragraphs so you can read them yourself.
The Church actively encourages medical treatment. “Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged” (CCC 2375), and CCC 2379 assumes couples will have gone as far as “exhausting legitimate medical procedures.” Diagnosis, surgery, hormonal treatment, and the restorative approaches developed by Catholic physicians to find and treat the underlying cause are all straightforwardly encouraged. Nobody is asking you to do nothing.
Donor gametes and surrogacy are ruled out. Techniques involving “the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus) are gravely immoral,” because they infringe “the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him” (CCC 2376).
IVF using only the couple’s own gametes is also ruled out, and this is the one that surprises people. Such techniques are “perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable,” because “they dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act” and entrust “the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists” (CCC 2377).
That is hard, and there is no use pretending otherwise. If you are in the middle of this decision, the person to talk to is a priest who will sit with you for an hour, not a page on the internet — and if the first one you ask is brisk about it, ask another. What is not in doubt is the first sentence of CCC 2374: the Church’s opening position on your situation is that you are suffering greatly.
Best Times for This Prayer
- On 16 October, the feast of St Gerard Majella.
- On 26 July, the feast of St Anne, who is invoked by women trying to conceive.
- At the start of a cycle, and at the end of one that failed.
- Before an appointment, a scan, or a procedure.
- On the due date of a child you lost.
- At Christmas and on Mother’s Day, which are the two hardest days of the year.
Scripture Connection
“As she continued praying, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard. Eli, thinking her drunk, said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken show of yourself?'” — 1 Samuel 1:12–14
The priest gets it wrong. The one person at the shrine whose job was to recognise prayer looked at the most desperate prayer in the building and saw a drunk woman. Hannah corrects him — “I have been pouring out my heart to the Lord” — and he blesses her, and the child is Samuel.
Anyone who has been handled badly by a well-meaning parish over this has a precedent. The prayer still worked.
Related prayers
St Gerard Majella is the patron to know here, and St Gianna Beretta Molla was a physician and mother, asked by couples and by doctors alike.
If the grief has become something heavier, see the Prayer for Depression. If the strain is falling on the marriage, St Joseph is the patron of families and of fathers who did not become fathers in the expected way. And the Memorare is what to say when you have run out of words entirely.
