If you have looked at pictures taken several decades ago---for example, wedding pictures---you probably have wondered, "How could people have ever worn that?" Just as fashions come and go and sometimes return, each age has its taken-for-granted notions that, once those notions have had their day and died out, one wonders, "How could people actually have believed that?"

Watching I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, The Ozzie and Harriet Show, Father Knows Best, or My Three Sons, you’d think that real families during the 1950s and 1960s had omniscient husbands and fathers whose wisdom could solve any and every problem, wives and mothers who wore dresses and were festooned strings of mother pearls while dusting, vacuuming, and doing the laundry, and kids whose biggest problem was causing mischief in school. Looking back, it’s pretty easy to see how naïve that notion was. Real families had husbands and fathers who didn’t have all of the answers, mothers who wore jeans and sweatshirts, and kids who got into big trouble. At least, in the Jacobs’ family.

Then, watching The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, or The Waltons in the 1970s, you’d think real families did everything together, always got along and, even when there was trouble, everything always worked out. Or, just the opposite, if you watched The Jeffersons or All In The Family. Looking back, real families didn’t always do everything together, didn’t always get along, and bad things did happen. Moreover, real families didn’t allow arguments and swearing nor did they tolerate mean-spirited, stubborn, or racist remarks. At least, "not in this house," my mom would say and the piquant taste of Lux soap would soon follow.

And, in the 1980s and 1990s, if you watched Married With Children or The Simpsons, you’d think that real families had loveable, but complete dunderheads for husbands and wives who produced kids who were infinitely smarter than their gene pool would predict. Looking back, it’s pretty easy to see how that did not depict real families. Parents normally aren’t complete dunderheads and kids aren’t normally omniscient.

From a Catholic perspective, what constitutes real family life, not just in this generation but in any generation? And, how does today’s feast of the Holy Family challenge parents and kids to become a real family, as God intends it?

One clue to the answer, I think, has very much to do with what those television shows did not portray about real families. Perhaps God had a place in the lives of the Nelson and Cleaver families, but you never saw Ozzie and Harriet or June and Ward praying or, for that matter, dragging their children to church. Perhaps, too, faith had a place in the lives of the Bundys and Simpsons, but you never once heard them relate their struggles to their faith and try to resolve their differences as people of faith do. Maybe Archie and Edith did provide Gloria religious instruction, but never once did you hear Archie or Edith engaging Gloria in an extended conversation about morality.

Looking back over the past five decades, it’s almost as if God has been the "entirely Absent One" from real family life, at least as depicted on the television screen.

From a Catholic perspective, I would assert that God is not the entirely Absent One. No, for Catholics, God is the "entirely Present One" in real family life, although maybe not in the way some might think.

Nowhere is God more present than in husbands and wives who work hard to root their marriage in God.  And, husbands and wives parents bear with one another, they become more intimately united in the warm bond of God's peace and love. In God’s absence, chaos and hate divide spouses, destroying their love for one another. Simply put: for Catholics, God is the "entirely Present One" who constitutes real family life as mothers and fathers bear with one another, are intimately united in the warm bond of God's peace and love, and share that gift with their children. As the former President of Notre Dame University once said: "The greatest gift a father can have for his children is to love their mother." To which I add: "And, the greatest gift a mother can have for her children is to love their father."

The evidence is legion about what occurs when parents fail to root their marriage in God. In his forthcoming book, The Broken Hearth, William J. Bennett relates the sad fact that spousal desertion, abandonment, and divorce are at an all time high with mothers increasingly deserting their children and abandoning their families. Why? Because these people are "unhappy." According to Bennett, rather than be a "moral presence" and an example of healthy adult functioning, these unhappy women and men choose instead to be an "immoral presence" modeling unhealthy adult dysfunctioning.

The statistics resulting from unhealthy adult dysfunctioning in families are not new.  We all know that children who grow up in broken families tend, on the average, to end up having a broken marriages and families themselves. But, what Bennett makes clear is that, if children do not learn the lessons of what love, honor, and obedience require of their parents, where else are children to learn these lessons? Certainly not from television!

I’d add, however, that just because one’s parent or parents didn’t provide a moral presence doesn’t mean that one will have a broken marriage or family. Just as our parents’ happiness and success provides no guarantee of our own happiness and success, it is also true our parents’ unhappiness and failure does not fate or doom us to repeat their errors. It simply means having to make hard choices that they were unwilling to make and to follow through on one's commitments, like to the words "I do." The only way this will be possible, however, is by rooting one's life in God.

"Can we be honest?" Joan Rivers asks before she tells her audience what’s really on her mind.

Well, the honest fact is that in every instance of a broken marriage that I have encountered over the decades, God is the "entirely Absent One." Furthermore, real family life is not a bunch of holidays and vacations or getting everything that I want, the way I want it, and when I want it. Instead, real family life presents difficult and challenging circumstances that require inculcating selfless patience. Tensions and frustrations will rise, especially as spouses struggle to become of one mind and heart and deal honestly with their different personalities and opinions. Stresses will come and go for parents, too, especially as their children grow and begin to test their independence.  In sum, real family life teaches us that the people we love aren’t always so likable.

But the ultimate challenge that real family life places before us is to love those people, as St. Paul says, by "bearing with one another." We all know that it isn’t easy to endure, suffer, and shoulder the burdens imposed upon us by family members...or, so my family members oftentimes remind me. Only by working continuously at having rooting our lives in God is it possible to bear with and to forgive one another. Then, as spouses deal with these stresses and tensions because God is the source of their marriage, their moral presence will teach their children what love, honor, and obedience require.

Why is this?

Because "to bear" also means "to give birth to." Just as during the Christmas season we celebrate Mary bearing and giving birth to Jesus, so too, by rooting our lives in God, we too can bear with one another and give birth to the virtues of "heartfelt mercy, kindness, humility, meekness and patience" and even to "put on love, which binds the rest together and makes them perfect."