The Guardian Angel Prayer: the text and where it came from
The prayer
Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide.
Amen.
In short
The guardian angel prayer is the first prayer many Catholic children learn by heart, and it comes from a Latin quatrain, Angele Dei, of around the eleventh century. In four lines it asks the angel for four things: to light, to guard, to rule and to guide the one praying.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 6 min read
When to pray it
In the morning on waking and at night before sleeping — bedtime is what fixed it in the memory of several generations. It is often the first prayer a child learns all the way through, before the Lord’s Prayer.
There is a clause in the middle that almost nobody hears: “to whom God’s love commits me here.” The prayer does not assert that the angel exists or that he was assigned — it assumes it, and the Latin assumes it with a conditional. It is a rare modesty in a memorised prayer, and it shifts the centre of gravity: the one who commits is God, and the angel only receives.
It is also a four-line prayer with four verbs, which helps explain why it is the first one learned. It fits in a single breath, it rhymes in pairs, and it requires understanding nothing at all in order to be said — the child learns the sound first and the sense later, which is how most prayers enter a life.
It is worth stating what Catholic devotion claims here and what it does not. It claims that God uses angels to care for people, and that one may ask them what one asks any intercessor. It does not claim that the angel has power of his own, that he replaces God’s providence, or that there is a technique for learning his name.
The Letter to the Hebrews gives the most economical definition of an angel in the whole Bible: ministering spirits, sent for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. The sentence settles two things at once — the angel is sent, so he does not act on his own account; and he is sent for someone else’s sake, so he is never the centre of the scene.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared Eleventh or twelfth century, in Latin
The original is a Latin quatrain: “Angele Dei, qui custos es mei, me tibi commissum pietate superna, hodie illumina, custodi, rege et guberna.” It circulates in medieval prayer books and tradition attributes it to Reginald of Canterbury, an eleventh-century Benedictine monk — an old attribution, repeated in reference works, that nobody has been able to confirm. What can be said safely is that the formula was in common use before the thirteenth century.
The devotion is a good deal older than the prayer. The idea that each person has an angel assigned appears in Second Temple Judaism and is read in Christianity from Matthew 18:10 and from a curious scene in Acts 12, where the disciples, refusing to believe Peter is at the door, say it must be “his angel”. The feast is far later: Paul V approved it in 1608, and Clement X extended it to the whole Latin church in 1670, on 2 October.
The English version is a rhyming paraphrase rather than a translation, and it keeps one thing the Latin had that other languages dropped: the word “this day”. It is a morning prayer with a one-day term, the same shape as the daily bread of the Lord’s Prayer — and the Portuguese version, by contrast, replaced it with “always”.
Little-known details
The Latin says “today”, and the Portuguese version says “always”
Four verbs survive every translation, in different orders
The guardian angel turns up in Scripture at a closed door
The prayer asks for protection from nothing in particular
What the passages say
10See to it that you do not despise even one of these little ones. For I say to you, that their Angels in heaven continually look upon the face of my Father, who is in heaven.
The text the devotion rests on. Jesus speaks of “these little ones” and says their angels continually look on the face of the Father. Notice what the line does not say: it does not say that every person has one angel assigned for life — that reading was built later, from here.
11For he has given his Angels charge over you, so as to preserve you in all your ways.
12With their hands, they will carry you, lest you hurt your foot against a stone.
The psalm most quoted about angelic protection, and the one the devil quotes to Jesus in the desert. Note the chapter number: the CPDV follows the Vulgate’s numbering, so this is the psalm printed as 91 in the Portuguese and Spanish editions here.
14Are they not all spirits of ministration, sent to minister for the sake of those who shall receive the inheritance of salvation?
The shortest definition of an angel in the Bible: spirits of ministration, sent for the sake of those who are to receive salvation. Two facts in one verse — they are sent, so they do not act on their own; and the reason for sending is always somebody else.
13Then, as he knocked at the door of the gate, a girl went out to answer, whose name was Rhoda.
14And when she recognized the voice of Peter, out of joy, she did not open the gate, but instead, running in, she reported that Peter stood before the gate.
15But they said to her, “You are crazy.” But she reaffirmed that this was so. Then they were saying, “It is his angel.”
The scene that shows how ordinary the idea was: faced with a knock at the door that could not be Peter, the community’s immediate explanation is “It is his angel.” Nobody in the text explains or defends the phrase, which is the best sign that it needed no defence.