"Those who touch the dead body of Christ . . . touch the Word of life and hold in their hands the flesh of God, who is substantially and personally present in the dead cadaver of Christ."

"all that befalls Jesus Christ is rightly attributed only to the person of the Word, who is the personal subject of all the human actions and sufferings [and 'all divine and human properties'] of Christ.

     . . . And "this is the case also on Holy Saturday, when the body and soul of Christ are separated by death.  The human body of Christ undergoes death in the crucifixion, and the animating principle of the body is sundered from the body.  His cadaver is then buried in the tomb.  Here, however, the person of the Word continues to subsist personally in his cadaver.  The body of Christ remains hypostatically united to the Word even after death.  Those who touch the dead body of Christ, then, do indeed touch the Word of life and hold in their hands the flesh of God, who is substantially and personally present in the dead cadaver of Christ.  Meanwhile, the Word also continues to subsist in his spiritual soul separated from his body.  This human soul is the soul of the Word.  And in this immaterial soul, the Word illumines the whole cosmos of human souls who have died prior to the time of Christ (enlightening them in various ways, as we have seen).  It follows from all this that the Word is luminous personally in and through his death, both in his cadaveric body and in his separated soul.  In both he teaches us about the personal identity of God the Son and Word who has come into the world to illumine our human condition.  In these mysteries we perceive his solidarity with the human race, since God freely adopted our human nature for our sake and in the service of our salvation.  In that sense, God the Son’s personal solidarity with us even in human death is indicative of a deeper divine will that he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit and in which he is utterly one with [(i.e. not separated from)] them.  God the Trinity willed that the Son should take flesh and die for our salvation, advancing even into the experience of death and hell, as a means to demonstrate the power of God to make use of death in his own human life in order to undo the power of death over the human race as a collective whole.

     ". . . the divine goodness and love of God are perfect and are therefore not subject to the possibility of any form of internal theological drama.  They cannot develop or become more perfectly enriched, as if God could grow in goodness or love as an effect of his dramatic struggle with creaturely evil, suffering, death, or hell.  Nevertheless, God can reveal to us in particularly intensive ways his own goodness and intrinsically immutable love through the drama of his own human suffering, death, and descent into hell.  It is through these mysteries not that God changes, but that the unchanging love of God is made most manifest to us precisely in God’s all-powerful victory over the powers of death, moral evil, and hell.  It is the victory of Christ, his triumphant, luminous entry into hell on Holy Saturday, that manifests most to us his love for the human race.  He has the capacity as God in his goodness and love to make use even of the worst that angelic and human evil can do, to draw forth a yet greater and infinitely superior good:  the good of our participation in his divine life, in the world of the resurrection.  It is not, then, the passivity, misery, or spiritual loss of Christ alone that indicates his true solidarity with us out of love.  Rather, as the universal tradition of the ancient fathers underscores in both west and east:  Christ’s true solidarity with us on Holy Saturday is most deeply expressed by the use of his genuine divine authority in the service of his victory over evil.  This is an authority borne in love, but also one that originates from Christ’s legitimate power as God.  On Holy Saturday, Christ shows us his true solidarity with us not only as man but also as God, by conquering death, hell, and the devil with the power of love."

     Thomas Joseph White, O.P., contra Hans Urs von Balthasar and others, The incarnate Lord:  a Thomistic study in Christology (Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 419-420 (“Did Christ descend into hell?”), small caps mine.  Cf. this one.