Traditional prayer
The Guardian Angel Prayer (Angele Dei)
Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom his love commits me here,
Ever this day be at my side,
To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.
Latin
Angele Dei,
qui custos es mei,
me tibi commissum pietate superna
illumina, custodi,
rege, et guberna. Amen.
Latin The Raccolta (1910), no. 296, p. 267
About this prayer
The Raccolta of 1910, the English edition of the Church’s collection of indulgenced prayers, prints the Angele Dei in Latin with two English forms: a plain one, “O Angel of God, whom God hath appointed to be my guardian, enlighten and protect, direct and govern me. Amen,” and the rhymed verse above, which has become the first prayer of countless Catholic children. Its notes trace the indulgence for it to a brief of Pius VI in 1795.
The Church’s faith in guardian angels rests on the words of Christ: “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). The psalm says it of every soul who trusts God: “For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalm 90:11, Douay-Rheims; Psalm 91 in modern Bibles).
The Catechism teaches that the angels watch over and pray for every human life from infancy until death, and, citing St. Basil, that each believer has an angel at his side to protect him and shepherd him toward life (CCC 336). The angel is a creature and a servant of God. The prayer asks him only for what God sends him to give: light, protection, direction, governance.
A mother often gives this prayer to a child before any other. She can keep praying it, by name, over a child who has long since stopped saying it: a son on the road, a daughter far from home or far from the faith. The Church teaches that this care lasts from infancy until death (CCC 336); it does not end when the child grows up.
The feast of the Guardian Angels is kept on 2 October. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 records that Paul V placed it in the general calendar in 1608 as an optional feast, and that Clement X made it obligatory for the whole Church and fixed it on 2 October, the first free day after the feast of St. Michael.
When to pray it
- In the morning, as the prayer itself says: “ever this day.”
- With children at bedtime and on waking.
- Before a journey, a surgery, a hard conversation, a child’s first day anywhere.
- For each child, each godchild, each person in your care, by name.
- On 2 October, the feast of the Guardian Angels.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.