The school motto “IN LABORE GAUDIUM” means “JOY IN DUTY” in English and “ 勤而樂 ” in Chinese . It embodies the mission of our school, which is “to provide a balanced and demanding formation based on Catholic Christian principles that enable our students to accomplish their full potential academically, as well as to grow to be upright and responsible men”. If each boy is personally able to feel that this mission is accomplished in him, the result will be Joy.

Joy should not be our personal goal, but is the fruit of achieving our life mission or doing our life’s duty, which requires hard work done well for good and upright reasons. As the Catholic faith that forms the principles of our school’s system of education tell us, the most wholesome and upright reason for doing anything, is to do it for God and our fellow men, not because we are forced to do so, but because we want to. This is what Saint Josemaría Escrivá tells us “that the most supernatural reason for doing anything at all is because we want to”.

Duty is not something we are made slaves to do, but something we should feel we must do for God and for others. Doing our duty means giving up our freedom in order to do something greater and more important than what we want to do at certain times or occasions. Doing our duty makes us better persons through the work we do and also makes the society in which we live a better place because it is made more perfect through our personal effort coordinated with other people’s work efforts. Thus one of the fruits of doing our duty is a more perfect society from which everyone is able to share Joy.