I think Father Brian asssigned this homily to me today on the Feast of the Holy Family because he thought I must know something about families. But after growing up in a large extended Italian family, and having a family of my own, I can tell you honestly today, I'm clueless! I'm still trying to figure out the dynamics of what we call "a family." It seems like such a simple little community, but (My God!) how complex! I feel like the psychologist who, before he was married, wrote a book with the title, "Ten Commandments for Successful Marriage and Parenting." Then he got married and had small children of his own. And when it came time to put out the second edition of his book, he changed the title just a little bit, "Seven Recommendations for Successful Marriage and Parenting." And, by the time he got to the point where he needed to put out a third edition of the book, his kids were teenagers. He changed the title again, tweaked it a little bit, "Three Suggestions for Successful Marriage and Parenting."

Today we have the Holy Family held up as our model: Joseph, the perfect husband and father, Mary, the perfect wife and mother, Jesus, the perfect child. Now does that sound like any family you've ever been associated with before? Not me. But let's take a deeper look. Perhaps there is something that we can draw from the lives of these three special people that will touch our lives and our hearts in some way.

First, I have to tell you a story that's really true, even though it sounds hokey. If it sounds hokey to me, it will probably sound really corny to you. But, last Sunday, I was standing on the Van Nuys Amtrak Station platform, waiting for the bus that would take me to Bakersfield and then back to Martinez on the train. I was thinking about this homily last Sunday morning. I was pacing up and down the concrete, and thinking about this. You know.... what am I going to say? I had a lot of ideas floating around. And then I looked down to the ground, and there was a metallic object shining on the concrete. It was this medal of St. Joseph the Worker.... And I thought, "Oh, OK." .... Joseph the Worker. That got me thinking, "What was his job?" Traditionally we have been told that Joseph was a carpenter, but I got to thinking that the real work of this man was his marriage and his family. That's the main thing that he worked on through his life. And that didn't come easy. And so, Joseph, as father and husband, that would merit for me, the title, "Joseph the Worker" even if he were a plumber, or whatever he did.

The psychologist had narrowed down his book to three suggestions. Today I've tried to distill, from the life of the Holy Family, two... two essential elements of family. Now if they give me this assignment next year it might only be one. After that, I don't know....

The first is, willingness to compromise.... willingness to compromise. Now, that marriage between Mary and Joseph was not an easy one to put together. We think of them at the crib. You go back there. Everybody has their hands folded. It looks real simple. But that marriage did not come easily. Joseph had a vision of what his life with Mary was going to be like. He loved this woman, planned to have children with her, and live a quiet, obscure life. And before they were able to be married, it suddenly occurs that Mary is having a child from some unknown source. And Joseph had to make a decision at that point. He was really rattled. If you read the Scripture, he was not real calm about this. But he had to make a decision. By Jewish law, he had every right to break off that engagement. They called it a "divorce," because engagement was considered really part of the marriage. But Joseph stepped back and thought, "I love this woman. Yes. There is something unorthodox about the way this marriage is starting out, but I am willing to compromise my original dream in order to have a life with Mary and this child that she is bearing," even though it was not his child.

Now Mary, on her part, had an image of what her marriage to Joseph was going to be like. And it did not include having the Child Jesus Who was going to be the Messiah. That was not part of her original plan for her life. But when this mystery took place within her, she was willing to give up her idea of what marriage and family was going to be like in order to make it work with Joseph, the man that she loved. That's a pretty complex set of circumstances. The Holy Family was not a simple family.... a very complicated arrangement. But, in compromising and in giving up something that each one of them wanted, they got in return something much more than they ever expected.

Look at our families, what they would be without compromise. If one of us has an attitude: "These are my opinions. This is my behavior. There is the line in the sand. I will not cross that line....." (I don't care who is involved, whether it is wife or children, or father, mother, husband...) "This is where I stand. You take me as I am, or you don't take me at all...." Where do you go from there? What kind of family is there? You have a family that's deeply wounded, maybe a family that is actually destroyed. Compromise, willingness to compromise.... Now "compromise" doesn't mean that one person always gives in to the other. It doesn't work that way. That's weakness. It's not compromise. Compromise means that we each give something of what we want, and the other person gives something of what he or she wants. And, in putting that together, we come up with something more beautiful and greater than we had before.

The second essential element is mutual trust.... absolute trust. In the Gospel I just read here you have Joseph having a dream. It was not Mary's dream. She did not have the dream. Joseph wakes her up in the middle of the night and says, "We've got to get out of town. Our child is in danger. If we don't leave now, we might not have a child." So, Mary picks up. It said, "In the night, they headed out and became refugees in Egypt." Now Mary could have said, if she did not trust Joseph, if she had not absolute trust that what he said was true, she could have said, "What are you talking about? Are you crazy? I don't want to go to Egypt. I never wanted to live in Egypt. I want to go back where my mom and dad are, in the village." But that's not what happened because they had such a history of trust that whatever Joseph said, Mary knew was going to be true. And whatever Mary said, Joseph could take that and put it in the bank, just like money.

What about our lives and our families? Do we have that kind of trust? Because, without it, again, like unwillingness to compromise, when there isn't that kind of trust in a marriage and in a family, you have a wounded family, perhaps a broken family. And so, if a husband says to his wife, "I've got to go out, Honey. I'll be back about 5:30. I have some errands to do. What time is dinner?" She says, "We'll eat dinner soon as you get back." He goes off. Now she has to believe that he is really going where he says he is going and he is coming back when he says he's coming back. If, at nine o'clock, he isn't around, you have a broken promise there, a broken commitment, and the wife begins to wonder, "Where is he? What is he doing? Who is he with? Is he in a bar? Is he with a woman?...." all the things that go through people's minds, simply because there was the lack of trust. And the wife, the same thing. Her husband has to be able to believe every word she says and feel that he can take that to the bank and deposit it because it's hard currency. He can trust that that's real.

I know we have a lot of teenagers here at this Mass this morning. And I really would like to urge you to take this message to heart. Your parents need to be able to believe every word you tell them. If you say you're going to the basketball game at the high school, your parents need to be able to believe without a doubt that you're going to the game at the gym. If you tell your parents you'll be back at 11:30 and they say, "OK. That's fine." and at one o'clock, they are still waiting for you, you destroy the trust. The trust level sinks. And so the next time you say, "I'm going to the game at the gym," your parents are sitting there wondering, "Now where is he really going?... Where is she really going?" You start putting doubts in the mind of your parents, and what can they do? They feel that they have to be like the CIA or the FBI. "Maybe I'd better drive over to the gym and see if he or she is really there." And that's a terrible way to live. It's an awful way to live. We need to be able to trust each other. And, if we can't trust each other in a family, who can we trust in this world?

So you can see then that the Holy Family had some of the same problems as we do. It wasn't "perfect mother, perfect wife, perfect husband, perfect father, perfect child..." You know, they had to go through some of the struggles that we do. There is so much more that could be said about family. If you built a library, you could fill the library with books about family. And so, there is a lot more that we could say. But I can't think of a better way to start than with "willingness to compromise" and with "mutual trust."