Chapter 11 — Part I — Article IX (Of the Church)
Section 266. Q. Is there any testimony of holy Scripture to beneficent apparitions of saints from heaven? A. The Evangelist St. Matthew relates that after the death of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves, after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Matt. xxvii. 52, 53. And since a miracle so great could not be without some adequate end, we must suppose that the saints which then arose appeared for this, that they might announce the descent of Jesus Christ into hell, and his triumphal resurrection; and so move men born in the Church of the Old Testament to pass over the more readily into that of the New, then opened.