To expectant mothers
The church cares for all of its members unceasingly. When, for example, a woman learns that she is going to become a mother, she addresses the Lord with a prayer for a safe and successful birth.
A Prayer for Pregnant Women
"Lord and Master, Jesus Christ our God, the Source of life and immortality, I thank Thee that Thou hast granted me Thy servant, in my married state, to be a partaker of Thy blessing and gift.
For Thou, o Master, hast said: 'Grow and multiply and fill the earth'.
I thank Thee and pray: bless this fruit of my body which Thou hast given me.
Surround him with Thy grace and enlighten Him with Thy Holy Spirit and make him grow healthy and chaste in body with his limbs in tact. Sanctify his body, mind, heart, interior and thought. Grace an intelligent soul to this child who will be born, root him in the fear of Thee and present him with a faithful angel, guardian of his soul and body, protect, keep strengthen and preserve the child within my womb until the appointed time of his birth, but do not conceal him in his mother’s womb. For by Thy hands Thou hast prepared him, Thou hast given him life and breath.
O Lord Jesus Christ, into Thy almighty, fatherly hands, I entrust my infant.
Place on him Thy hand of Grace and by Thy Holy Spirit, sanctify and renew him unto eternal life, so that he may become a partaker of Thy Kingdom.
Amen".
After the birth of the baby, the Priest, who may be invited to visit the woman after childbirth, to read prayers of thanksgiving to the Lord for His guarding of the mother during childbirth, and asks Him to cure her of illness, to grant to her strength and a quick recovery, and also to protect the newborn and make him a worthy participant in the life of the church.
On the eighth day after the birth of the child, the Priest is invited to read a prayer for naming of the baby in honour of a saint so that in life the child imitates the pious life of this saint. But this prayer can be read simultaneously with a prayer for the mother. After the naming, the Priest blesses the baby and asks the Lord that the soul of the newborn not be left without the light of the Lord’s teachings and that the heart of the newborn remembers the sufferings of the Son of God, and that the newborn joining with the Church, never renounces belief in Christ, lives according to the Lord’s Commandments and inherits in the Lord’s Heavenly Kingdom.