Lord Jesus, You created us as man and woman, body and soul, and called what You created good.
Yet infertility can make it very difficult to believe that our bodies are good.
A body that does not do what we expected can begin to feel like an enemy.
We may look at ourselves through numbers and measurements—hormone levels, cycles, laboratory results, diagnoses, procedures, medications, semen analyses, ultrasounds, surgeries, and pregnancy tests.
Little by little, we can begin to think of our bodies as machines.
Working.
Not working.
Successful.
Failed.
Fertile.
Infertile.
Jesus, rescue us from that way of seeing ourselves.
Our bodies are not machines.
They are us.
The body is not something disposable wrapped around the “real” person. Through our bodies we speak, work, embrace, sacrifice, serve, suffer, pray, kneel, receive the Eucharist, comfort one another, and give ourselves in love.
Teach us to look at our bodies with reverence even when they carry wounds.
Lord, when a woman experiencing infertility looks at herself and thinks, “My body has failed,” remind her:
You are still a woman.
Your femininity is not measured by pregnancy.
Your dignity is not measured by whether your womb has carried a child.
You are a beloved daughter of God.
And when a man looks at himself and thinks, “My body has failed,” remind him:
You are still a man.
Your masculinity is not measured by fertility.
Your dignity is not determined by a laboratory result.
You are a beloved son of God.
Protect husband and wife from turning against their own bodies or one another’s.
Let a husband look upon his wife with tenderness.
Let a wife look upon her husband with tenderness.
When one body carries the apparent cause of infertility, protect that spouse from feeling like the defective half of the marriage.
There is no defective half.
There are two persons.
Two bodies.
Two souls.
Two stories.
Two people who promised to love one another through whatever came.
Lord, teach us the truth about marital love.
Our bodies speak.
The marital embrace says:
I give myself to you.
Not merely my fertility.
Not merely the parts of me that work the way I hoped.
Myself.
Help husband and wife never reduce intimacy to a reproductive assignment.
When every embrace begins to feel scheduled, measured, evaluated, or followed by anxious waiting, restore tenderness.
Let husband and wife remember how to hold one another without calculating anything.
Let affection remain affection.
Let laughter return.
Let a kiss simply be a kiss.
Let married love remain a place of communion rather than another examination room.
Teach us what St. John Paul II so often pointed toward in the Theology of the Body: that the body can express the gift of the person.
Help us live that gift faithfully.
Lord, protect us from a culture that sometimes treats the body as raw material to control, redesign, use, or overcome.
Medicine is a tremendous gift, and we thank You for it.
Use medicine to heal.
Use physicians to diagnose.
Use surgery, treatment, and knowledge to restore healthy function wherever possible.
But give us wisdom to recognize that technological power does not give us ownership over human life.
No child is manufactured.
No child is owed.
No child is a product.
Every child is a person to be received.
Help us remain faithful to the dignity of the marital union and the dignity of human life from its first moment.
And Jesus, when we struggle with Church teaching because our longing is so intense, do not let us run away from You.
Let us bring the struggle closer.
Let us ask questions.
Let us learn.
Let us seek faithful guidance.
Let us wrestle honestly.
And then give us grace to trust that God’s commandments are not intended to mock our suffering but to protect love, marriage, and the dignity of the human person.
Lord, we also bring You the particular sorrow of the body that longs to do something it cannot presently do.
The woman who longs to carry a child.
The man who longs to father one.
The wife who wants to give her husband a baby.
The husband who wants to give his wife a baby.
The couple who looks at one another and wonders why something that seems to happen so easily for others has become so difficult for them.
Enter that sorrow.
If healing is possible, please heal.
Restore healthy function.
Guide physicians toward underlying causes.
And if it is Your will, allow husband and wife to conceive.
Let their bodily gift to one another become, through Your creative power, the beginning of another human life.
What an astonishing mystery that would be:
Two persons give themselves to one another in love, and suddenly there exists someone who has never existed before.
A new soul.
A new story.
A new person who will exist forever.
If You grant that gift, keep us in awe of it.
But if biological parenthood does not come, protect us from believing that our bodies have become meaningless.
Our bodies can still give.
Hands can serve.
Arms can embrace.
Shoulders can carry burdens.
Feet can go where someone needs help.
Mouths can encourage.
Eyes can notice the lonely.
Bodies can kneel in prayer.
And hearts can love far beyond biological parenthood.
If adoption becomes part of our story, teach us something beautiful about parenthood:
Love does not require genetic possession.
A child may not have our eyes, our nose, our hair, or our DNA and can still become someone for whom we would give our lives.
St. Joseph, you teach us this.
Your fatherhood was not based upon biological generation, yet you gave Jesus genuine paternal love, protection, work, sacrifice, and presence.
Teach us that biology matters, but love is never imprisoned by biology.
Mary, help women experiencing infertility love their bodies without pretending infertility does not hurt.
St. Joseph, help men experiencing infertility resist shame and become strong through self-giving love.
St. John Paul II, intercede for husbands and wives that they may understand the dignity and meaning of their bodies and live their marriage as a sincere gift of self.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, bring marriages before Jesus in the Eucharist and pray that husband and wife never lose sight of Christ while longing for a child.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, who carried the hidden Christ within your body, protect every human life and every woman whose body has become a place of sorrow, hope, or fear.
Holy Family, teach us the dignity of being male and female, husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter.
And Jesus, when infertility makes us ask:
“What is wrong with me?”
help us distinguish between a medical condition that may need healing and the deeper lie that says I am wrong.
Something in the body may be wounded.
Something may not function as it should.
Something may need treatment.
But the person is never a mistake.
The person retains immeasurable dignity.
So help us care for what is wounded without hating the body that carries the wound.
Help us seek healing without making fertility our identity.
Help us desire parenthood without treating a child as something we are entitled to possess.
Help us live our marriage without turning one another into instruments for achieving a pregnancy.
And help us remember who we are.
A beloved son of God.
A beloved daughter of God.
A husband.
A wife.
Two persons called to become a sincere gift to one another.
Lord, if it is Your will, let our love someday welcome another little body into our arms.
Ten tiny fingers.
Ten tiny toes.
A face we could stare at for hours.
A little person created in Your image and entrusted to our care.
But whether that day comes soon, much later, through adoption, or not in the way we have imagined, never let infertility steal the truth written more deeply into us than any diagnosis:
We are made in the image and likeness of God.
Our bodies have dignity.
Our marriage has dignity.
Our love has meaning.
And our lives can be fruitful in ways we may not yet be able to see.
Jesus, teach us to see ourselves and one another as You do.
Always remember Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Amen.