It made me regretful that I hadn’t trusted him right away. Once I accepted the call, it became obvious how happy it was to follow God’s plan for me. Faced with a similar call to a vocation, I waffled and doubted and considered it for years. Catherine hears God calling her to a religious life, she naturally and fully trusts that this is the life for her. God the Father is to be adored and loved, trusted in all things. Perhaps the answer is as simple as trust. What is it that makes children so capable of super-human feats of love and devotion? She was not a young person to be dismissed. People began visiting Catherine for advice and to witness her example. She wore the distinctive Dominican religious dress and stayed in a small room in the family home where she spent three years praying before going out to serve the sick and poor.
Her parents permitted her to become a Dominican tertiary – a vowed religious who continues to live at home - at the age of 16. It turns out, her seemingly mischievous childish action was quite serious. Her parents punished her for destroying her hair until she revealed her vow. She secretly took a vow of virginity and as a sign of sincerity cut off her hair just like women do when they enter a convent. From age seven, she had religious visions and often fasted from food as a spiritual discipline. Many young children rashly vow to never marry, but when Catherine made that same vow, she meant it. She listened in the way only a child can listen.
Growing up in a large family, she somehow managed to use her imagination to escape the chaos of a household full of siblings to spend quiet time with God. She always dreamed big, even as a little girl. She had an almost childish impudence, to tell one of the most powerful men in the world that he needed to shape up. Catherine is famous for her boldness in chastising the pope.