The Guardian Angel Prayer

It is small enough for a child to learn and true enough for a grown man to mean. The Guardian Angel Prayer — the Angele Dei — rests on something the Church holds and teaches: that each person is accompanied by an angel who guards and guides him. English and Latin are below; the Scripture and the Catechism are under them.

The Guardian Angel Prayer — English and Latin

Angel of God

Both texts as printed in the Appendix of common prayers in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on vatican.va (stress accents dropped here). Some pray the third line as "ever this night be at my side" in the evening.

When to pray it

Pray it in the morning — the prayer says "ever this day" — to put the day under your angel's guard; pair it with the Catholic morning offering prayer, which hands the same day to God. Pray it with children at bedtime and on waking. It is a natural prayer before a journey, before anything dangerous, and any time you know you need protection and guidance. It is over in a breath, which is why it survives in houses where longer prayers do not.

What Scripture says

Two passages carry the devotion. Christ warns against despising the little ones: "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10, Douay-Rheims). And the psalm the Church prays at Compline on Sunday: "For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways" (Psalm 90:11 in the Douay numbering — Psalm 91:11 in most modern Bibles).

What the Church teaches about guardian angels

This is not folklore, and it is not a children's story. The Catechism teaches: "From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession" and "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life" (CCC 336). The same paragraph adds that "already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God."

Two things follow, and both matter for how you pray. First, the angel is a creature — a servant sent by God, not a second god and not a force you operate. The prayer asks him to light, guard, rule and guide; it does not ask him for what only God gives. Second, his care does not replace God's providence: it is how that providence reaches you. Honoring the angel is honoring the One who sent him.

The feast: the Holy Guardian Angels, 2 October

The Church keeps the memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels on 2 October — the day after the memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and a few days after the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael on 29 September (see Vatican News' calendar of saints for 2 October). It is a good day to teach the prayer to a child who does not know it yet, and a good day for a father to pray it out loud at the table so his children hear a man say it.

Teaching it to children

• Teach it in four lines, not four verses. Say one line, have them say it back. Most children have it in a week.
• Attach it to a moment, not a mood. Lights off, or the seatbelt click. A prayer with a trigger survives; a prayer that waits for a feeling does not.
• Answer the obvious question honestly. "Is my angel real?" — yes: the Church teaches that each of us is accompanied by an angel as protector and shepherd (CCC 336). "Does he stop everything bad?" — no, and the prayer does not promise that; it asks for light, guard, rule and guide, which is what God actually gives.
• Pray it yourself in front of them. A child who only ever hears a prayer assigned to him concludes it is for children. One who hears his father pray it at forty draws the opposite conclusion.
• Add the Latin when they are ready. Five short lines, and it is the same prayer the Church prints in the Compendium. Children memorize sound before meaning; that is an advantage here.

Frequently asked questions