University Motto

Lux In Domino -- Light In The Lord

This is the motto of the Christian school. This is the battle cry of those sons of Loyola who have chosen for their field of conquest with the Cross and the argument the fertile plains and verdant mountains of seven thousand tropical isles. This is their battle cry, who would mold the Filipino youth, educate him, fashion his gifts with the steady hands of Arts and Science, and bathe these in supernatural light and revelation.

This is the aim of that modern laboratory, that imposing library, that classroom, that playing field, that majestic but democratic house where one night Shakespeare may live and speak, and the next morning an unwieldy Freshman may squirm and stutter at his early attempt at original eloquence. For all this is a stairway -- not to the stars, those little spots of silver which after all with little stroke of art and science we may reach and hold prisoners in our thought and fancy -- no -- to something much higher; all this is a stairway to the Lord.

From the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians (5:8), these words capture the spirit of a way of life which the Ateneo holds up to her sons and daughters as their best contribution to the work by which God transforms the world. To be "light in the Lord" in all fullness demands moving insistently and deliberately towards God as the center of a person's life, identifying the issues that such a centering poses, and then moving out to the world to find ever new ways of constructing the edifice, cultivating the garden, painting the masterpiece, that God is unfolding in one's life.

It is a call to BE that light of the Lord in the world.

Lux in Domino. This indeed is the motto of the Atenean -- the motto of men.