Local explorer Illinois Smith set out on his yearly mission to find the long-lost Seventh Sunday of Easter.
The amateur archaeologist, navigator, and liturgical collector has scoured the globe in search of the lost treasure, which native stories tell lives in remote and obscure dioceses in North America. Though he has tried for the last fifteen years, Smith has yet to find more than the odd tantalizing clue of the Sunday’s whereabouts.
Many think his cause is hopeless.
“Virtually all mainstream liturgists believe the Sunday is lost forever,” Dr. Peter Patrickson told The Daily Inquisition. “It was destroyed by the Ascension in 1965. Native stories to the contrary are just children’s myths.”
Some skeptics even believe the Seventh Sunday of Easter never existed. The view is growing among the academic liturgical community, though most still believe the Sunday at least has some basis in history.
“Personally, I think that while the tales of a separate Gospel reading for such a Sunday is a later myth, there was indeed a Sunday seven weeks after Easter,” Dr. Patrickson said.
But Illinois Smith is a believer. He claims to have discovered in his prior searches a Missal containing unique prayers for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, but unfortunately they were in Latin and he couldn’t translate. That book, he says, was subsequently lost in his escape from the SSPX seminary–a fact which skeptics find a little too convenient.
“It’s out there somewhere,” Smith muttered as he boarded a charter boat to Puerto Rico. “One day I’ll find it.”
Someone on the boat pointed out that the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey celebrated Ascension on a Thursday until only a few short years ago, a fact Smith should’ve known since he was from Delaware.
Smith replied that he was aware, but that “nothing is worth going to Newark.”
