Our angels protect us and guide us according to God's will, and their goal is to get us home to Heaven to be with God, and with them, forever. If we pay attention to them, learn to recognize their gentle promptings, and follow the advice they whisper to our hearts, we will find it easier to choose virtue and avoid sin.
Unfortunately, though, most of us tend to forget that we even have a guardian angel. We simply often ignore this God-appointed being who is really one of our best friends.
To help us recall and rely on our guardian angels, we should say the following prayer at least once a day:
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.
1. Angel of God – According to the Catechism, an angel is “a spiritual, personal, and immortal creature, with intelligence and free will, who glorifies God without ceasing and who serves God as a messenger of His saving plan” (p. 866). Angels are higher than human beings in the spiritual hierarchy. They know much more than we do, for they see God face to face. Those who have chosen to serve Him (and some did not and fell from their high place) do so perfectly. The angels love God with a full, deep love, and they love us dearly, too. They want nothing more than to see us get to Heaven, so when one of them is called to serve as a guardian, he must be quite thrilled with the job, as difficult as it must be.
2. my guardian dear – Here we accept our angel as our own beloved friend. We acknowledge his protection and guidance and begin to express our gratitude.
3. to whom His love commits me here – God is the One Who assigns each individual person to an individual angel. He entrusts us to the angel's care out of love. Of course, God never stops protecting us and guiding us Himself, but He wants to give us every possible opportunity to know and respond to His loving plan of salvation, so He also gives us an angel to help us.
4. ever this day be at my side – With these words, we ask our angel to do something that he does anyway. He stays right beside us every single minute of every single day. So why do we pray this? Really, we are reminding ourselves that we have a guardian angel at our side all the time and that we can depend on him. He will never leave.
5. to light and guard – Part of a guardian angel's job is to illuminate our minds with truth, especially about God's loving will, and to shine a spotlight on what we need to know to make good moral choices. A guardian angel also guards his charge, providing protection especially from spiritual dangers and attacks from the enemy but also offering protection from physical dangers according to God's will.
6. to rule and guide – Our guardian angel nudges us in the right direction. He gives us a gentle push along the correct path. He tells our hearts how to follow God's will. But we have to listen. We have free will, and we can choose to ignore both our angel and God. Our angel can't force us, but if we let him, he will always point us toward God.
7. Amen – With this one little word, we give a firm “yes” to everything we have just prayed. We reaffirm our acknowledgment of our guardian angel and commit ourselves to his care and counsel. We promise to listen to him and to follow him as he guides us along the path to Heaven.
Let us pray.
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.
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