Michael Nugent

Here’s another magic trick from The Catechist’s Magic Kit: 80 Simple Tricks for Teaching Catholicism to Kids. To repeat, this is not satire. It is from an actual book, published this year with the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Brooklyn, New York.

This week I am featuring some of my favourite tricks from this delightful book. Yesterday I showed you a card trick to encourage children to consider becoming Priests by lying to them. In today’s trick, you will learn how to persuade children that the Resurrection was real by showing them a faked illusion.

To perform this trick, you need a cutout of Jesus which is provided in the book, plus some crayons, an envelope and a pair of scissors. You start by asking a volunteer child to colour in the cutout picture of Jesus. You then put the cutout Jesus into the envelope, and cut the envelope in two with the scissors, before showing the children that Jesus has emerged unharmed from the cutting.

As before, you start by setting the scene: “When Jesus said that he would destroy the temple and, in three days, rebuild it, He wasn’t speaking about the actual temple in Jerusalem where the Jews would make sacrifices to God. Instead, Jesus was referring to His body, which would be crucified and then resurrected. let me show you an example of what Jesus meant.”

You now take the coloured-in cutout of Jesus, and slide it into the envelope. Or so the children think! Actually, you are sliding the cutout Jesus in and out of two slits that you have secretly cut in the back of the envelope. As the book warns: “Make sure that you don’t flash the back of the envelope or the illusion will be destroyed.” This is great advice, because who would want illusions about the Resurrection to be destroyed?

You continue: “When Jesus was killed, His body stayed in the tomb for three days,” and you illustrate the killing with the rather gruesome metaphor of cutting the envelope, inside which lies Jesus, in two with the scissors. Or so the children think! Instead, somewhat like Penn and Teller sawing a lady in two, you are actually cutting the envelope without harming the cutout of Jesus.

You then ask the children: “But do you know what happened after those three days?” And you show your delighted audience that the coloured-in cutout Jesus has not been destroyed. Lest they miss the theological significance of the parlour trick, you explain: “This is what Jesus meant. His body might have been destroyed, but He lives forever with us and the father.”

To convince any skeptical children that Jesus is really unharmed, you pass out the cutout for them to examine. But heed the final warning in the book: “And rip up the envelope to destroy any evidence of the trick.” Again, this is great advice, because if people have evidence that something is not true they are much less likely to believe it.

It’s a good trick, albeit with some practical and theological flaws. Based on the illustration, nobody would believe that the cutout Jesus has been put into the envelope. It is protruding from two ends where the envelope is sealed. And cutting Jesus in two is not really the same as crucifying him. But at least the book makes clear that, when Jesus talked of the temple, the temple that he referred to had nothing to do with those pesky Jews.