From another post:
This is not entirely easy to grasp in Catholic theology, as far as I can tell (someone feel free to correct me with Magisterial resources if I should err). There have been theological suppositions that Jesus descended to something if I may say was hell-like, if not a permanent hell of futility, because it was death. For example, I dug this up from a memory from my Eschatology class:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? … This anguish, in fact, contains no object to which we could put a name. It is the terrible expression of our ultimate solitude. Who among us has not felt the awful sensation of this state of abandonment? Who would not hear the blessed, comfortimg miracle worked in these circumstances by an affectionate word? But wherever there is such solitude as to be inaccessible to the transforming word of love, then that is the place we call hell. … All the world’s anguish is, in the final analysis, the anguish generated by this solitude. This is why in the Old Testament, the word indicating the kingdom of the dead was identical to the word for hell: sheol. Death, in fact, is absolute solitude. But this solitude which can no longer be illumined by love, which is so profound that love can no longer reach it, is hell.
“Descended into hell” - this confession of Holy Saturday means that Christ passed through the door of solitude, that he descended to the deep, too deep for our condition of solitude to fathom, so deep it never even comes near. This means, however, that also in that extreme night which no word penetrates, when we will all be like children, banished, weeping, there will be a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes our hand and leads us on. Man’s insuperable solitude was overcome from the moment
He entered it. Hell was beaten from the moment love entered the region of death and the no man’s land of solitude was inhabited by him. …the moment there is the presence of love in death’s sphere, then life penetrates death: life is not taken from your faithful, O Lord, but transformed, the Church prays in its funeral liturgy.
In the final analysis, no one can measure the portent of the words: “descended into hell”. … And in the throes of our protest against the darkness of the death of God we begin to be grateful for the light that comes to us from this same darkness." (Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the CDF, Second Meditation on Holy Saturday, 1969)
I found more from him, as Pope Benedict XVI from this blog (which also references Von Balthasar’s theological contributions on the matter), emphasizing Christ’s victory over death on Holy Saturday:
His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death. The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. (Benedict XVI, 2007 Easter Vigil Homily)
So it’s kind of like that the abode of the dead was hell, absent of love, but “unlockable” only by He who is love. In essence the “place” we call hell is indeed eternal, but in order to escape its locks, we must be attached to he who has the key. In encountering this futile “place of death,” which is deprived of love, he defeats death.
It’s really a mystery. Especially if we try to impose some kind of logical mechanics to the event. Rather, as Pope Benedict also said in that Easter Vigil Homily:
In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then? Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate.
