The Prayer to the Guardian Angel

A traditional Catholic 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 Latin

Angele Dei,
qui custos es mei,
me tibi commissum pietate superna
hodie illumina, custodi, rege et guberna. Amen.

Where it comes from

The archangel Raphael strides through the evening with his great dark wings open, holding the boy Tobias by the wrist and pointing the way ahead with his other hand; the boy looks up into his face, a fish hanging from his other hand, and a small white dog sits by the path and watches them go. Raphael walked the whole road with him before the boy learned who he was. That every soul has its own guardian angel has never been defined as an article of faith, but it is, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, the mind of the Church, a thing never decreed and still held. The classic text is Christ’s own, below. Saint Jerome wrote: “how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it.” To light and guard, to rule and guide: Raphael is doing all four at once with two hands, and on our roads someone is doing them for us before we have thought to look up.

Hugh Pope, “Guardian Angel”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (1910): newadvent.org

¹⁰See 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.

¹¹For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways.

Matthew 18:10 · Psalms 90:11, Douay-Rheims (Challoner)

More in painting

The traditional prayers  ·  The Rosary