Children of divorce are already upset and confused about what is going on in their lives. They shouldn’t have to compete with a new girlfriend for their father’s attention. The never-ending movement between dad’s house, mom’s apartment, and school take a toll on their sense of stability and safety. The remedy is to spend as much time with them as you can and pay attention to what they say.
What does the author mean by this insistence that Jesus came not with water only but also with blood? We may assume that he is alluding to a tendency to place all the emphasis on Jesus’ baptism while setting the Cross aside. And this probably also meant that only the word, the doctrine, the message was held to be important, but not “the flesh”, the living body of Christ that bled on the Cross; it probably meant an attempt to create a Christianity of thoughts and ideas, divorced from the reality of the flesh – sacrifice and sacrament.
But that’s not all. Lay people will have to take the initiative on many other matters. Some, such as conducting Communion services, will require approval from the priest-pastor. But others, from organizing prayer groups to setting up and operating social service programs and running schools, will not. If they aim to do something within their professional competence, without invoking the authority of the Church and themselves accepting responsibility for the results, lay people can and should simply go ahead and do it, without seeking or receiving clerical approval.