Guardian Angel Prayer

The Ángele Dei — the "Angel of God" prayer — is among the most beloved and most universally learned prayers of the Latin Church, traditionally the very first that a Catholic child is taught to say at his mother's knee. In four short lines it gathers the whole of the Church's teaching on the guardian angels: that God in His providence assigns to each soul an angel to enlighten, guard, rule, and guide it on the way to heaven.

The prayer is of medieval origin. It has long been attributed to St. Anselm of Canterbury (died 1109), and a fuller poetic form appears in the work of Reginald of Canterbury in the early twelfth century; the exact author, however, is unknown. What is certain is that the little verse was already in wide devotional use across the Middle Ages, its rhyming Latin — Dei / mei, supérna / gubérna — making it effortless to commit to memory.

Its doctrine is drawn straight from Scripture. Our Lord Himself testified to the guardian angels when He warned against despising the 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). The Psalmist sings that God "hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways" (Psalm 90:11), and from the Fathers onward the Church has held that this guardianship is given to every one of the faithful.

The devotion was crowned by a feast: after local observance spread through the sixteenth century, Pope Clement X in 1670 extended the memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels to the universal Church and fixed it on 2 October. The prayer itself was later enriched with an indulgence by Pope Pius VI in 1795 for the faithful who recite it morning and evening — a simple daily entrustment of oneself to the angel who never leaves one's side.