The motto opens a five-year journey inspired by the Apostolic Prayer of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, and is the fruit of Claretian schools working together as a network.
Claretian schools begin the 2026-2027 school year with a shared motto: “Everything begins with a heartbeat”. It is not a stand-alone slogan. It is the first step on a journey the Claretian provinces have been making together, one that has already borne concrete fruit: the gathering of the pastoral teams of the 16 Claretian schools, the “Evangelizar educando” (Evangelising through Education) Plan of the five schools of the Province of Fátima in Spain and Portugal, and a five-year pastoral and vocational itinerary. The schools are moving ever more in tune with one another.
A journey set to the rhythm of the Apostolic Prayer
The itinerary grows out of the prayer that sums up Claret’s life: “Lord, my God and Father, may I know you and make you known…”. Each year focuses on one of its petitions: “May I know you and make you known” (Year 1), “May I love you and make you loved” (Year 2), “May I serve you and make you served” (Year 3), “May I praise you and make you praised” (Year 4) and, finally, “Amen” (Year 5).
This first year stands at the source. Before love, service or mission, there is something that sets everything in motion: encounter. That is how it is with faith, and with life itself. Everything begins with a first heartbeat, with an experience that changes us.
Receiving and giving: the beat of a missionary heart
The motto captures a central insight of Claretian spirituality. Each petition of the Apostolic Prayer holds a double movement, like the heart: it fills with life (diastole) and pumps it outward (systole). We receive from God and give to the world. We live an experience and long for others to live it too. We meet Jesus and proclaim him. We are disciples, and we become missionaries.
The poster tells this simply: a heart that is already beating, a hand that reaches out and sets it alight (God, who always takes the first step), and a burst of colour flowing outward. The decisive heartbeat does not come from our own effort: it is a gift. So the motto is less an invitation to “do things” than to let ourselves be found. And what is truly lived in the heart cannot be kept to oneself. So it was with Claret: the more he came to know God, the more urgently he felt the need to make him known.
A song to set the rhythm
The motto comes with a song by Álvaro Fraile, in Spanish. Its chorus sums up the spirit of the year:
Todo comienza con un latido,
súmate al ritmo que no va a parar.
Aquí hay un corazón encendido
que ya es imposible de apagar.
(Everything begins with a heartbeat, / join the rhythm that won’t stop. / Here is a heart on fire / that can never be put out.)
A year to awaken the heart
Alongside the poster and the song, the schools share common working materials: keys for reading the poster, and celebrations and classroom sessions for the high points of the year — the feast of Fr Claret, Advent, Lent, Easter and the month of Mary. Everything is adapted to each stage, from nursery to the teaching staff. The aim is not to add more activities, but to awaken the heart. Only a heart that truly beats can sustain, in the years to come, a life that loves, serves, praises and gives itself.
