Don’t get me wrong. Speaking this truth with words is extremely important. How can people know about truth unless it is proclaimed to them? It’s literally my job with TOBET to tell people about Jesus and the Theology of the Body. The entire Church needs to speak of Jesus’s love and mercy and truth.
But even more than the language of words—we need to proclaim the truth with the language of our bodies, to borrow St. John Paul’s term in TOB. Eighty percent of all bodily communication is non-verbal. That means that most of what we communicate to others is with our bodies (not merely our lips), whether we like it or not.
Jesus Himself spent only three years of his entire life in proclaiming the Good News with the language of His words (that’s less than 10% of his historical life). And much of that included miracles, obvious proclamations of bodily actions.
Before His three years of outward evangelization, how did he evangelize?
For instance, when Jesus was in the temple “listening to the teachers and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). You can imagine Jesus reverencing the authority of these teachers both with his questions as well as with his bodily posture.
Then, when Mary and Joseph show up, He says just a bit with the language of His words: “Don’t you know I need to be in my Father’s house?” (Lk. 2: 50). After that, the language of His body spoke much more loudly: “Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51). One can imagine the bow of his head to his father and his mother as he said, “Yes, Abba. Yes, Imma.”
No wonder people followed Him. It wasn’t because Jesus only spoke things that are true. We might say it’s how His body “spoke” things that are true. I have seen people yelling Bible verses on the street with anger in their voices. While I might applaud that boldness and realize we need similar boldness, nevertheless, the body speaks a language of truth much more impactfully with a display of compassion, respect, and understanding. Without this, our words become empty and meaningless—or worse, filled with unjust anger.
I’ll never forget a particular time when I went to the Sacrament of Confession. The priest communicated the reason for my sin with his words, but with the language of his body, especially through his tone, he communicated God’s love. I heard with my ear, “Every sin is an offense against God,” but with my heart I heard, “God loves you so much.” Undoubtedly, I encountered Jesus through the bodily actions of the priest.
It was a beautiful experience that I hope to imitate to convict others of sin and communicate with my bodily actions that God loves them How does your body proclaim the truth of the Gospel?