Go quickly, and tell his disciples. St. Mark significantly adds, "and Peter." The disciples were to believe without seeing. They had deserted Christ in his hour of need, had not stood by the cross, nor aided in his burial; so they were not to be honoured with the vision of angels or the first sight of the risen Lord.
This was reserved for the faithful women, who thus received their mission to carry a message to the messengers—a foretaste of the ministry which they should perform in the Church of Christ. He goeth before you ( προα ìγει ὑμᾶς) into Galilee.
The verb is noticeable. It is that used by our Lord himself on his way to the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:32), and it implies the act of a shepherd at the head of his flock, leading them to new pastures (comp.
John 10:4). The good Shepherd had been smitten, and the sheep scattered; now under his guidance they were to be reunited. The apostolic band had been temporarily dissolved and disintegrated; the college was again to be reformed, and was to receive its renewed commission in seclusion and peace, that it might return to Jerusalem with unimpaired strength to commence its arduous labours.
The place of meeting is in Galilee, where most of his mighty works were done, and where it was safer for the disciples to assemble than at Jerusalem. The majority of them came from this region, and thither they returned some ten days (John 20:26; John 21:1-4) after the Resurrection, to resume their ordinary occupations (verse 16).
Thus they would realize that it was the same Jesus who met them there with whom, these three past years, they had held familiar intercourse. It was ordained, for some reason not expressly stated, that from Galilee should proceed Christ's spiritual kingdom which he came to establish—that "word which," as Peter said (Acts 10:37), "was published throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee."
We read of only two appearances of Christ in Galilee—once at the lake, mentioned in the last chapter of St. John, and again in verse 17 of this chapter of St. Matthew. It is, however, possible that the appearance named by St.
Paul (1 Corinthians 15:6), when he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at one time, may have occurred in Galilee. If this is the ease, it would be remarkable as the only public revelation of Christ after his resurrection, and the comparative seclusion of the northern district may have been one reason for its selection as the scene for this great demonstration.
There was doubtless some moral fitness in the humble and despised Galilee being made the starting point of his Church who was despised and rejected of men whom it was contemptuously said, "Doth the Christ come out of Galilee?"
(John 7:41). "As in all things God sets at naught the pride of mankind, and chooses persons, instruments, and places mean in the eves of the world, teaching us that in humbler and more retired abodes, secret from the world, we are to seek for the strength of God, who hideth himself" (I.
Williams). Lo, I have told you. The angel thus solemnly confirms what he had just said.