1 Samuel 28:15

But Samuel said to Saul: Why have you disturbed me? etc. And the books of the Old Testament, very full of the grace of prophecy, openly testify to readers that after the passion of the Lord they should not be raised again to the symbolic observance of the letter, but rather that the very ministers of prophecy are disturbed when they see what they wrote understood differently than they themselves sensed.

There is, then, no stumbling block regarding the passage, but all things have been wondrously written and understood by those to whom God may reveal them. But we who have come at the consummation of the ages have something more. What more? If we depart from here, having become good and noble, not bringing with us the burdens of sin, we too shall pass through "the flaming sword," and shall not descend into the region where those who slept before his coming awaited Christ; rather we shall pass through, in no way harmed by the flaming sword. "And each one's work, of what sort it is, the fire itself will test. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." We shall pass through, then; and we have something more, and we cannot, having lived well, depart badly. The ancients did not say — nor the patriarchs, nor the prophets — what we can say, if we live well: "For it is better to depart and to be with Christ." Therefore, having thus something more and much gain in having come at the consummation of the ages, we first receive the denarius; for hear the parable, that "beginning, he gave the denarius from the last; but the first thought that they would receive something more." You, then, who are first, having come last, receive the wages from the householder in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen.

I have not digressed, nor have I forgotten the matter at hand; but this is what we wish to establish: that if all the prophets of Christ descended into Hades before Christ, as forerunners of Christ, so also Samuel descended there — not simply, but as a holy one. Wherever the holy one may be, he is holy. Is Christ no longer Christ, because he was once in Hades? Was he no longer the Son of God, because he came to be in the region below, "that every knee should bow in the name of Jesus Christ, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth"? Thus Christ was Christ even when he was below; and, so to speak, though being in the region below, in purpose he was above. So also the prophets and Samuel: even if they descend where the souls below are, they can be below in place, but they are not below in purpose. And I inquire: did they prophesy the things above the heavens? Yet I cannot grant to a demon such great power, that it prophesies concerning Saul and the people of God, and prophesies concerning the kingdom of David that he is about to reign. Those who say these things will come to know the truths regarding the passage; they will not find how to establish that a holy one would not come, for the salvation of those who are sick, into the place of those who are sick. Let physicians go into the places of the wounded soldiers, and let them enter where the stenches of their wounds are; this is what the physicians' love of humankind prompts. In this way the Word has prompted the Savior and the prophets both to come here and to descend into Hades.