Praying through the years of waiting

IA sorrow the Church takes seriously

The Catechism (no. 2374) begins its teaching on this subject not with a rule but with grief: it says that husbands and wives who find they cannot conceive suffer greatly. It gives two voices from Scripture. Abraham asks God what He will give him, since he goes childless, and Rachel cries to Jacob, “Give me children, otherwise I shall die” (Genesis 30:1, Douay-Rheims).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in Donum Vitae (1987), says the suffering of spouses who cannot have children is one everyone must understand, and that whatever its cause or prognosis, sterility “is certainly a difficult trial.” It asks the whole community of believers to support those unable to fulfil their legitimate longing for motherhood and fatherhood.

And it is not a verdict on your holiness. St Luke introduces Zachary and Elizabeth this way:

IIHannah: a woman who poured out her soul

The first chapter of the First Book of Kings (1 Samuel in modern Bibles) is the story of Anna, called Hannah in most English translations. Her husband Elcana loved her. His other wife, Phenenna, had children and taunted her for having none, year after year, at the very feasts when the family went up to worship. “Anna wept, and did not eat.” Elcana, helpless, asked her: “Am not I better to thee than ten children?”

Then, at the temple of the Lord in Silo, Hannah prayed, “shedding many tears.” Her lips moved but no sound came, and the priest Heli thought she was drunk. Her answer to him is one of the most honest prayers in Scripture:

Notice what Hannah teaches. She did not hide her sorrow from God or tidy it up. She brought it to His house. She was misunderstood, even by a priest, and she answered with dignity. And before there was any child, before anything had changed, “the woman went on her way, and ate, and her countenance was no more changed” (1:18). Her peace came first. Her son Samuel came later.

IIISt Anne and St Elizabeth

Tradition makes St Anne, the mother of Our Lady, a companion in this sorrow. Be clear about where her story comes from: the Catholic Encyclopedia explains that everything we are told of Joachim and Anne, including their childlessness, comes from apocryphal writings, above all the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century writing the Church never received as Scripture, whose account seems modelled on Hannah’s own. It is tradition, not Gospel. But the Church’s long love for St Anne is real, and a grandmother in heaven is a good friend to a woman waiting.

Elizabeth’s story is Gospel. When she conceived in her old age she said, “Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he hath had regard to take away my reproach among men” (Luke 1:25), and the angel told Mary: “no word shall be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

These stories end with a child. Yours may not, and Scripture does not promise that it will. They are given to show that God sees, that tears are prayer, and that a woman’s worth was never in her womb.

IVWhat the Church teaches, with tenderness

• A child is a gift. The Catechism (no. 2378) says plainly: “A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift.” That protects the child, and it protects you: your marriage and your womanhood are not measured by what you have not been given.
• Medicine is welcome. The Church encourages research that seeks to overcome sterility, so long as it serves the true good of the person (no. 2375); Donum Vitae (II.8) wants scientists to keep working to prevent and remedy its causes, so that couples can conceive with full respect for their own dignity and the child’s. Seek good medical care, from a doctor who will respect your conscience.
• Some roads she cannot bless. Techniques that bring a third person into the couple’s procreation are judged gravely immoral; those that replace the marital act, even between husband and wife, morally unacceptable (nos. 2376–2377). The reason is not coldness: a child should come into being as the fruit of his parents’ gift of themselves to each other. A priest you trust can walk through particular questions with you.
• If you have already walked one of those roads, the Church does not ask you to love your child any less. Donum Vitae (II.5) says that every child who comes into the world “must in any case be accepted as a living gift of the divine Goodness and must be brought up with love.” The confessional is a place of mercy, and it is open to you.
• Your marriage is not less a marriage. “The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil,” the Catechism teaches (no. 2379), inviting husband and wife, once every legitimate medical road has been tried, to join their suffering to the Cross of Christ, from which all spiritual fruitfulness flows. Of couples to whom God has not granted children it says: “Their marriage can radiate a fruitfulness of charity, of hospitality, and of sacrifice” (no. 1654).

St John Paul II wrote that even when procreation is not possible, married life does not lose its value, and that physical sterility can open spouses to other important services to human life: adoption, educational work, help to other families and to poor or disabled children (Familiaris Consortio 14). In Mulieris Dignitatem (21), writing of women who give up marriage for the Kingdom, he speaks of a motherhood “according to the Spirit” and says that “spiritual motherhood takes on many different forms.” It is not offered to you instead of your grief. It is offered within it.

VHow to pray while you wait

• Pray like Hannah. Say exactly what you feel. “Cast thy care upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee” (Psalm 54:23, Douay-Rheims; Psalm 55 in modern Bibles).
• Pray with your husband. Elcana grieved too, and did not know what to say. The waiting belongs to you both; let it bring you closer rather than make you strangers.
• Keep one intention, faithfully. A novena to St Anne, a daily line in a prayer journal, a candle at a Marian altar. Small and steady outlasts large and exhausted.
• Guard the hard days. An announcement, a shower, the anniversary of a loss. You may step back. Charity does not require you to wound yourself.
• Do not carry it alone. A priest who will listen, a friend who will not offer formulas. If grief turns to despair, or you think of harming yourself, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any hour.

We could not find a traditional prayer for this sorrow in a public-domain source we could verify, so we offer this one, composed for 1765 Regina and labelled as such.

The Novenas tool can keep a novena to St Anne with you day by day, the Prayer Journal keeps your intention on your own device unless you choose to sync, and the Mater Dolorosa companion has a path for this sorrow when it is heaviest.