Your prayer reaches the ears of God, not because of the eloquence of the words, but because of the need from which it springs. Yet while you ask for a healthy baby and protection from the complications of fibroids and diabetes, I would have you lift your mind to something higher. Physical safety is not the whole of health, nor is the absence of bodily illness the only blessing. Many who have healthy bodies suffer from sick souls, and many who endure bodily affliction obtain spiritual soundness. You are weighed down by the burden of the pregnancy, and this is no small thing. Yet every woman who carries a child carries the weight of mortality, for the curse pronounced in Eden falls upon all, and none escape its shadow entirely. Do not understand me to say that your fears are nothing, for I myself have spoken of the woe to those who are with child in times of distress, because of their inability to flee and their great inertness. You feel this inertness now, and the anxiety about what may come.
But consider this: the body is given to us for health, not for wantonness or for the fulfillment of every desire. You have been making provision for the flesh, and this is not forbidden, but when the flesh fails or threatens, we learn more clearly that our truest life is elsewhere. The woman with the issue of blood did not demand that Christ come to her house or lay hands on her publicly. She approached in secret, saying within herself that if she could but touch the hem of His garment, she would be made whole. She saw who followed Him, out of what manner of house He had come, and these things made her of good hope. Hope not only in a remedy for the fibroids or a safe delivery, though you may ask for these. Hope above all in the Physician who makes a whole man healthy. For if He could restore the body that was wholly undone, He can certainly restore yours, whether by removing the illness or by giving you strength to bear it. But what is it to be whole? It is not merely to have all the limbs sound and the organs functioning, but to have the soul upright before God. Many who stand in the church are confident, but let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. And many who lie on a pallet or walk with a staff are nearer the Kingdom than those who strut about in their pride. You ask for no complications due to fibroids and diabetes. These are words spoken from a heart that rightly fears suffering. But do not let that fear become a sickness of the soul more dangerous than any tumor. For those who sit in the vestibules of the churches, the maimed and blind and aged, are placed there not only to receive alms but to instruct those who enter. When you see them, you are meant to lay aside your arrogance, to become contrite in heart, and to give thanks for what health you have, and to learn patience for what you lack. The sick man who continually enters the holy places will receive no slight consolation, and the healthy man will not be highminded on account of his bodily health. You are now in the place of the one who may become sick, or who fears sickness, and this is a place of great spiritual profit if you use it aright.
You pray, "Father, help me and have mercy on us." This is the very cry that pierces the clouds. But mercy is not always given in the form of removing the trial. Sometimes mercy appears as the strength to endure the trial and to come forth from it like gold tried in the fire. The poor, the demoniacs, those whose limbs are distorted, enter the oratories of the martyrs, and what do they teach you? That the present life is a sleep, and the things in it are no way different from dreams. He who grows rich in a dream wakes to poverty; he who is sick in a dream wakes to health. But in this life, the sickness may remain, and yet the soul may wake to righteousness. Is this a small mercy? I tell you, it is a greater one. Do not therefore approach God as though the forty days of Lent or the days of your pregnancy were sufficient to purify all the sins of the past, and then you would return to your former ways. Rather, prepare yourself now for whatever may come, whether health or sickness, ease or pain, a smooth delivery or a hard one, a child who thrives or a child who struggles. Let your soul be so disposed that you can say with the Apostle, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."
When the deacon cries out, "The holy things for the holy," it is a call that searches the faults of all. None of us is worthy by his own merits. We come to the spiritual fountain not carelessly but with trembling, knowing that the sickly sheep are shut up within and kept in the dark, given different food, and not permitted to partake of the pure fountain without the fold. You come asking for the bodily fountain of health, and this is natural, but seek first the spiritual health that fits you for the Table. For if you partake of that with arrogance or a heart clinging only to earthly comforts, you eat and drink judgment to yourself. But if you come with the faith of the woman who touched the hem, saying in your heart, "If I may but touch, I shall be whole," then whether the fibroids dissolve or the diabetes is controlled, or whether they remain and cause you to walk with difficulty, you will have touched the Lord and received the wholeness that cannot be taken away. This is the child you ought most to desire, the child of a healthy soul born again in the womb of the Church through suffering embraced and offered to God. Pray for a healthy baby, yes, but pray more that this baby, whether healthy in body or afflicted, may be born into the life of Christ and may grow in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That is the blessing that no complication can steal away.