Choosing Joy

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, May 21st, 2023:
​The Ascension of the Lord

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Psalm 47

R. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet 
or 
R. Alleluia!

Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth. 

R. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet 
or 
R. Alleluia!

God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. 

R. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet 
or 
R. Alleluia!

For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a Psalm. God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. 

R. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet 
or 
R. Alleluia!

A few years ago, I felt God calling me to a career change. This call was unexpected and, frankly, unwelcome. I had a wonderful future planned for myself and none of it involved God’s new ideas for my career. I wish I could say I handled this with grace, but I must admit I was pretty immature about it. First I refused to pray for two straight days. When that didn’t work out, I finally returned to prayer with a lot of frustration and anger, both of which I suspect were masking an underlying fear. God, don’t You want me to be happy? I was highly resistant, and finally God pulled a trump card on me. I felt Him call me by my Confirmation name, Catherine. 

I didn’t choose the name Catherine for the well-known Saint Catherine of Siena, but rather her quieter, lesser-known companion, Saint Catherine of Sweden. Catherine knew that her vocation was to the religious life, but her father forced her to marry when she was a young teen. I have often imagined the despair she must have felt – and later the joy, when she confessed her feelings to her new husband and he wholeheartedly supported her, agreeing to a Josephite marriage, which allowed her to focus her time and energy on God’s calling. They had a happy marriage until his death, after which she joyfully pursued her original vocation with her whole heart and helped found a new order. If it weren’t for the marriage she was so opposed to, she would have entered religious life, her calling, but in an order that wasn’t her calling, and may never have found the fullness of joy in being a sister or in founding an order of her own. 

God doesn’t call me by my Confirmation name often. But when He does, it usually means He’s asking me to trust Him, even when I truly believe He’s wrong. And so at last, I applied for a job I thought I wasn’t suited for and I left my perfect career plans behind. Unsurprisingly, God was right. The career I had planned for myself was a wonderful and worthy one, but it wasn’t God’s long-term plan for my life. His nudge (then push, then shove when my stubbornness was truly at its peak) into a difficult time was an act of kindness, to bring me to a greater joy. 

God’s plans for our lives are plans for joy. Do we truly believe this? He did not make us to be miserable, and He does not want endless suffering for us. God wants us to follow Him so that we can easily and joyfully sing along to Psalm 47, so full of praise for His goodness that we simply cannot stay silent. If right now it feels like He’s calling you away from happiness, bring your frustrations to prayer and follow Him anyway. I certainly am grateful I did. 




​Jenna Young

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