Don Bosco Kenya launches Character Coaches Training

March 2, 2023 selvam Current Activity

Don Bosco Youth Ministry Kenya, in collaboration with Positive Psychology Association of Kenya (PPAK) offers: Character Coaches’ Training – Level 1

Venue: Don Bosco Youth Educational Services, Karen (in person)
Dates: Option 1: 27th-29th March 2023; Option 2: 30th Mar to 1st Apr 2023 – 8.30am to 4.30pm daily.
Cost: Ksh. 8000/- | Ksh.7500 for PPAK registered members!
(Cost includes training, conference package, manual, lunch & two teas for three days of training).
Add: 1700/- per night for B&B if needed.
REGISTER ONLINE FOR Character Coaches’ Training – Level 1: https://forms.gle/2rXUDHsSEisq7Qij7

What is Character?
Character is the moral core of the person. It is the set of virtuous habits that form part of the person that determines how they make moral choices in their daily life, and function in the world. Character contributes to individual wellbeing and social flourishing.
Who is a Character […]

Sermon for 1st Sunday in Lent – Year A Homily

February 23, 2023February 24, 2023 selvam Year A

Temptations: The Journey through the Wilderness
We say that the Season of Lent lasts forty days, as the Latin word, ‘Quadragesima” suggests. When I was a young seminarian – sceptical as I was – I took the calendar and wanted to make sure for myself if there were indeed 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. To my surprise, I found there are actually 47 days. I had reasons to be sceptical, after all! So I had a question for the teacher of liturgy, who, of course, was taken by surprise. Later he came up with a meaningful explanation: even on Sundays in Lent, we celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord, and hence they are not counted as days of fasting and penance. So Lent does have forty weekdays of fasting and penance!
‘Forty’ is symbolic of a generation, a lifetime. […]

Sermon for 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Homily

February 15, 2023February 16, 2023 selvam Year A

“You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Mt 5:48
Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp to be opened. It was basically a forced labour camp. Today it is open to the public. In this memorial site, there are different churches and a synagogue that have been built. What impressed me most during my visit to the memorial site was the Church of Reconciliation. The peculiarity of this church is that its structure/architecture has no right angles. The irregular shape is a symbolic protest against the orderly layout of the camp in which all the buildings are set in perfect array. As I was leaving the memorial site, I thought, an exaggerated sense of order could be a sign of neurosis. And it could be life-threatening.
In the gospel text of today, as Jesus continues his ‘Sermon […]

Sermon for 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A Homily

February 9, 2023February 11, 2023 selvam Year A

Your righteousness must go deeper (Mt 5:20)
The powerful invitation of the Sermon on the Mount, that we continue to listen to in the gospel reading of today, is to embrace the previous revelation of God and to be available to the God who is here and now. It is also an invitation to embrace the Law and to go beyond it. And to be part of the Kingdom of God, your righteousness has to be go beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 5:20).
This is the time of New Dispensation. Righteousness is not legalism. The word ‘righteousness’ could be translated as justice, uprightness, virtue, perfection. Matthew is constantly proposing a new and deeper meaning of righteousness. It is not mere conformity to law, but a response to the plan […]

Research on Secularisation Among Young Adults

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 selvam Current Activity

African scholars have claimed that African peoples are “notoriously religious”. Is this still the case? Empirical literature on the subject is meagre. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the antecedents, triggers and response of secularisation and spirituality among lapsed-Christian young adults in Nairobi, Kenya, the participants were aged between 18 and 35, who were baptised but have abandoned Christian faith in favour of secularisation or non-affiliated spirituality. Qualitative data, from semi-structured in-depth interviews among the 14 participants, sampled through a snowball process, was recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed by the two authors. Eleven emerging themes were identified from 10 hours of data. The first two themes suggest that mixed faith backgrounds of parents and discordant relationship within the family act as antecedents in adopting […]