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I’ve always wondered where the scriptural proof is of the Assumption of Mary.

This was one of the last doctrines I examined when I became Catholic, and the idea that it might have exclusively been in Sacred Tradition and not in Scripture was not an issue toe me. But St. John Henry Newman seems to believe that every single doctrine we Catholics believe is found in Scripture, but perhaps only in an implicit or subtle way.

For example, Hebrews 12:23, saying “the spirits of just men made perfect” is almost definitely an indication of Purgatory, although it doesn’t mention the word or teaching itself, but implies it by the word “made”, since we are certainly not perfect at the time we die, and since the perfection here is clearly meant to be moral perfection, in other words, no more love for sin in our hearts.

So I wondered for a while, where is the proof of this in Scripture?

Most answers to this question rely on the idea that, by the time of her canonization after her death, where she’s canonized in Revelation 12, she is clearly so holy that she’s definitely recorded as being perfect and not just sinless, and the logical implication is that God would grant her an early resurrection as a just reward.

But that’s not enough for me. I’d have to see somewhere in scripture that she actually rose earlier than the general resurrection to be satisfied with this.

And I think I found it in Matthew 27.

During the Crucifixion account, Matthew mysteriously jumps ahead and says that after the resurrection of Jesus, many holy people were also raised from the dead and walked around the holy city, appearing to many.

We have literally no other account of anyone rising from the dead and walking around and appearing to other people in the Bible or outside of the Bible, except the Assumption of Mary, the idea that Jesus gave Mary a bodily resurrection and brought her up to heaven shortly after she died.

Keep in mind how vague it is. All it explicitly says is that the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were resurrected after Jesus’s resurrection, and they went into the holy city, and appeared to many. It doesn’t say how many saints there were, or who they appeared to. And “the holy city” doesn’t mention which city.

The holy city could be a city on earth, such as Jerusalem, where the resurrected saints appeared to many alive at that time, and this is probably the best answer.

But it also could mean they went into the “holy city” of heaven above, and appeared to people in the same way Jesus appeared to St. Paul on the road to Damascus, which we already have precedent for with many approved Marian apparitions. This less fully supports the Assumption of Mary, but it also assumes teachings of the Catholic Church, so it couldn’t be an argument against Catholicism.

It does mention that “many” saints were resurrected, which is a bit unexpected, as the Church only teaches that Mary was raised from the dead early, and theologians only add St. Joseph out of reasonableness, due honor, and devotion. We’ve never really guessed at anyone else being raised early.

There is Enoch and Elijah, who we know for a fact never sinned (the wages of sin is death, and they never died), and had ascended to a state of heavenly glory immediately, the same way a resurrection would be. But this seemed to happen immediately, and plus they never died, and this verse in Matthew says the dead bodies of saints were raised, so it can’t be them.

The only two choices left in my opinion is that these other saints with Assumptions were either Old Testament saints like Moses and Isaiah, or New Testament saints like Peter and Paul.

One thing that seems clear is that whoever it was, it would have to be less early than Mary’s resurrection, which was given right after her death, as a reward for her extreme holiness. None of the other saints were that holy. For an Old Testament saint to be raised after a few hundred years is reasonable and fair.

But the New Testament saints raised with her would have to be raised a little later. So maybe St. James who was martyred in Acts is a candidate. And I personally don’t think it would be very fair if it was people who led very bad lives before their conversion, like Peter and Paul, because an early resurrection is a bigger gift than what the general New Testament saints would receive.

Also, it would probably have had to be those who died within the lifetime of Matthew, since he’s writing about it. Writing as a biographer as he is, it’s very unlikely that he had a mystical vision of something that would happen after his death and wrote about it. So I would guess it was a few saints who were martyred like St. James and St. Stephen, and maybe a few saints who were extremely holy but unnamed in scripture. That’s my guess who this “many” was, without having thought about it before now.

So yeah, the Assumption of Mary is right there in Matthew 27, and we’ve all been looking right at it this whole time. But Protestants and Catholics alike had no clue what that verse was ever talking about.

But if a few people, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Joseph (as many devout theologians, saints, and doctors have speculated) were given an early resurrection as a gift for their holiness on earth, then this is exactly what that verse is talking about.