The fear that grips a woman with child is no light matter; the burden of the body makes the soul prone to anxiety, for she cannot flee or cast off the weight of nature. Yet consider this: the thing you ask for, a healthy child and a body free from peril, is not in itself evil, but watch that you do not make provision for the flesh merely to fulfill its lusts. To seek health is permitted, but to cling to it with desperation, as if the soul's true life depended on it, is to kindle a fire that will not warm but consume. The woman who touched the hem of the garment did not demand a sign; she came secretly, in faith, and received her healing because she trusted not in her own worth but in His mercy. Imitate her. Do not say in yourself, "I shall certainly be delivered," as if you could compel the hand of God, but rather fall before Him with a contrite heart, saying, "Have mercy on us," as you have done. That prayer, offered in humility, is heard, not because you have bargained with forty days of piety or because the infant is innocent, but because He who made the womb is compassionate.
Look to those who sit before the doors of the holy places, the maimed, the demoniacs, the poor, the aged. What instruction do they offer? That the body, which you now guard with such care, is a fleeting vessel. The healthy man who glories in his soundness today may be cast down tomorrow; the sick man who despairs may rise up and become strong. Therefore, neither let the woman carrying a child be confident in her present state, nor let her with the fibroid despair. The one thing needed is to prepare the soul, for the body must return to dust, but the child you carry is destined for an eternal kingdom. When you come to the spiritual fountain, come not carelessly, as one who seeks only a cure for the flesh, but as one who would be numbered among the holy, separated from the scab of this world's attachments. Make provision for the body with a little wine, with rest, with due measure, but pour out your chief industry on the care of the soul, both yours and the one being formed within you. Let not the forty days of Lent alone be for your purifying; let every day become a preparation, not so that you may demand a reward, but so that you may stand ready to give an account, whether the child lives or is taken early to the Lord. The true health you should seek is that your whole house be made sound, for a man wholly restored to spiritual health is greater than one who merely escapes the knife and the fever. Raise up your child, if God grants it breath, not for the courts of this world, where dropsical pride inflames the heart, but in the chastening and admonition of the Lord, that it may be a physician to many, unburnt by the flame of earthly glory. Cast your care upon Him, not as one who presumes to command, but as one who knows that the sickly sheep, when shut within the fold, receive different food from the healthy, and that food is trust in the mercy of Jesus Christ, who alone can make a whole man healthy.