Mime is, in fact, humanity's oldest form of communication. Before language evolved enough to express needs, feelings, and desires, our ancestors relied on the body itself—on gesture and expression. This physical language is as old as speech is young.
The ancient Greeks and Romans staged silent spectacles in which actors communicated entirely through gesture. In the sixteenth century, performers used pantomime to carry out dangerous political satire. Modern mime developed chiefly in France during the 1930s as an art form in which meaning flows purely from bodily movement, facial expression, and gesture—performed in complete silence or accompanied by music. Over time, a new philosophy emerged: mime should not simply reproduce human actions through gestures, but rather express the inner state of a character through the refined, heightened language of the body itself.
When we teach our young people—and ourselves—to master this control, to give power to our gestures, to speak through our faces and bodies, we engage in a genuine art. Everyone can participate, regardless of theatrical skill or memorization ability. For our young people especially, this is crucial. They communicate far more effectively through mime than through words, just as a mother speaks to her newborn through expression alone—the face is the first language a child knows.
But when we fill mime with the teachings of Jesus, we achieve something extraordinary: we make the Gospel accessible to all.
This is one of the most powerful moments of our gatherings. It is prayer—though we may not recognize it as such. Not the contemplative prayer we typically imagine, but prayer that happens through the vibrations between people. Picture the words of Jesus penetrating our minds as we labor to give them flesh. His teachings pervade us, take on form, translate into simple, ordinary gestures. We live His word. We internalize it. We make it our own. It becomes a shared, wordless participation, a harmony created through gesture alone—an atmosphere of simplicity, peace, and profound understanding.
To immerse ourselves in a parable, to relive it through movement and gesture, means to grasp its meaning in a way that no amount of explanation could reach. When Jesus raises His hand as the reader speaks, when He touches, embraces, blesses—it is so moving that I, and not only I, find myself with tears in my eyes, shaken to the core.
The silence around is absolute. Every actor-mime is intent, serious in a way they rarely are, striving to express themselves with all their capacity—and they succeed, because the Word carries such power that it draws everyone in.
The Carnet de Route tells us that many have come to feel the word "mime" outdated—it conjures up actors and spectators, a story being translated into gesture. They propose calling this essential moment of our gathering "Reliving the Gospel." But we who understand that mime is a simple, accessible means—for everyone, especially our young people—of expressing our lived experience while reliving the words of Jesus, will call this moment "Reliving the Gospel through mime."
This moment has several dimensions:
- to live the words of Jesus with our whole being as we mime;
- after the mime, to speak in our own words what we have lived and felt in interpreting His word, and to share it with one another;
- after the gathering, to live that message of love concretely, with our brothers and sisters.
Vittoria Episcopello, 1998
