Apparition of the dead in Jerusalem

Saint Matthew - Chapter 27

[53] Et exeuntes de monumentis post resurrectionem ejus, venerunt in sanctam civitatem, et apparuerunt multis.
And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many.

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

It was not only in the sacred precincts that the dead appeared; they were also seen in the streets of the city, gliding like shades over the surface of the ground  spreading horror and dread before them wherever they went.  

Saint Matthew is the only one of the Evangelists who relates this last marvel, the greatest of all the portents which accompanied  the death of the Master.  Does he mean to describe the actual resurrection of dead bodies or merely phantom-like semblances of the departed which "appeared and to many?" Experts are still eagerly discussing the question, and will probably longer continue to discuss it, without any chance of coming to a final conclusion.  The text certainly says "bodies of the saints" and not the semblance of bodies, but there seems to be no need to strain the sense of the words used, and it would certainly appear that those who rose from the dead in this instance did not rise in the sense in which Lazarus did. 

On the other hand, we may ask, who were those who had the honour of being associated in a certain way with the resurrection of the Saviour?  We do not know.  Adam, Noah, Abraham, David and others have been suggested, or, again, Saint Joseph and Saint John the Baptist.  What would appear to be more probable, judging from the context, is that the "bodies" were those of people who had but recently died, as the sacred text would seem to imply that they were recognized by those to whom they appeared in the city.  That at least is the impression made on my mind by the expressions used by the Evangelist, although they may be interpreted differently.  In the verse quoted on the preceding page, the Evangelist Saint Matthew says: Multi corpora sanctorum qui dormierant, Or, "many bodies of the saints which slept arose".  From the very earliest days of Christianity, the word sleep has been used as a touching euphemism for death, or rather, perhaps, as the expression of a hope that death is but a sleep.  Hence the name cemetery, which is taken from a Greek word signifying sleeping-place [κοιμ-ητήριον, τό,
a sleeping-room, dormitory] and is now given to Christian burial-places where the remains of whole generations await your waking of the capital resurrection morn.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam