“Put on the armor of light”: SJU’s beloved motto

Put on the armor of light. It is one of the first things we tell new students, and it’s a saying you’ll hear time and time again attending St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict. When I first arrived at this institution, I’ll admit, I wasn’t impressed with it. It seemed like a pretty piece of scripture with little substance behind it. But as I have continued to ponder this simple statement, I have come to believe that the SJU school motto “Put on the Armor of Light” can help each of us rely more on our own strengths to improve our own lives and to improve our CSB+SJU community.

Light does not offer any protection on its own; it just reveals. When we put on “armor of light,” we are not donning external protection; we are allowing our own strengths and abilities to be revealed and are letting those help us in our struggles. We are putting on this armor, we are choosing to let our greatest strengths be revealed. We get to determine the course of lives using what strength we have, and what strength into which we can grow, not based on what we lack.

The strengths inside us that we choose to reveal are our armor of light and it will let us improve ourselves and change the world. A community thrives when each person offers the best of what they can do. When collaborators focus on what they’re good at instead of trying to do everything themselves, they gain far more than if they were working independently. For example, imagine one person is really good at organizing data but not at public speaking, and one person is really good at running meetings but not sorting data. If they work as a team, the public speaker can focus on public speaking and the data analyst can focus on their data. They will improve at what they’re good at and will be free from what they’re bad at and will work much better than if they were alone. Putting on our armor of light reveals what we’re good at, and what we can focus on when in community with others. If we all “put on our armor of light,” then together we can build a community where everyone is offering their best and everyone is succeeding together.

If we learn to follow the SJU motto “Put on the armor of light,” we will live more successful lives in a thriving community. I love this school, and I think everyone else here does too. It teaches us how to be good, smart people. And the motto is an excellent example of a simple tool that this school gives us with which we can succeed in the world. I love St. John’s, and I think that together we should all “put on our armor of light” and march forth to do good in the world as her shining legions of glory.