Did the Angel bow to Mary at the Annunciation?

Greetings from Jerusalem!

Today somebody wrote me and asked me about a comment I had made in one of my talks. He asked,

“In responding to a Twitter message about Mary, I had a link to one of your videos where you said an angel bowed to Mary. They went crazy saying no where in the Bible does it say the angel bowed to Mary — can you clarify?”

I responded briefly,

The Bible doesn’t say a lot of things. But if one understands a bit of cultural literacy, especially of antient Israel, and the proper response to a queen, one doesn’t have to find everything in the Bible to know how things probably took place in biblical times.

I was talking with Cardinal Schoenborn of Austria. He’s the one that suggested that the angel coming to Mary bowed profoundly as he recognized her as the woman who would become the queen of heaven.

The king always has a queen, but the queen is never his wife. The queen of Israel is always the mother. Since Mary is the mother of the king, Jesus, the angel would’ve come with great respect.

The Cardinal suggested that the angel bowed to her, knowing that she was at that very moment, becoming the mother of the king, and therefore the queen, not only of Israel, but the queen of all of heaven and the queen of the angels.

The proper response is to bow before the queen.

See also my article on the Queen ship of Mary HERE.