Guardian Angel Prayer: The Words, the Latin, and Seven Great Paintings

One night in Jerusalem, about the year 44, a servant girl named Rhoda heard knocking at the gate and recognised the voice of Peter, who was supposed to be chained in Herod’s prison. She ran to tell the disciples praying inside, and they did not believe her. “It is his angel,” they said. The book of Acts records the words without comment, because to the first Christians the idea needed none: every one of them had an angel of his own. The Guardian Angel prayer is the simplest way the Church has found to speak to that angel.

This page gives the Guardian Angel prayer in full, with its night version, the Latin Angele Dei, its history, its meaning line by line, how to pray it with children, and a free printable prayer card. Each line of the prayer is illustrated by a great painting, from Raphael’s Liberation of Saint Peter to the holy card that hung above so many children’s beds.

 

The Guardian Angel Prayer: Full Text

This is the traditional English form, often called the Angel of God prayer, the one Catholic children have learned by heart for generations:

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.

At bedtime, the second line changes by one word:

Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

Some books print “to light, to guard”, or “to whom his love commits me here”. The prayer is the same.

The Angele Dei in Latin

The prayer was first written in Latin, and it is still said in Latin in monasteries and in traditional Catholic families:

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

Word for word, it reads: “Angel of God, who are my guardian, since I am entrusted to you by heavenly goodness, enlighten, guard, rule and govern me.” The English version keeps the four verbs and turns them into rhyme, which is why a four year old can learn it in a week.

Where the Guardian Angel Prayer Comes From

The belief behind the prayer is older than the prayer itself. The Psalms say that God “shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalm 91:11), and in the book of Exodus God promises, “Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way” (Exodus 23:20). Jesus himself warned his disciples not to despise the little ones, “for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father” (Matthew 18:10). The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums it up: from the beginning of life until death, every believer has an angel beside him “as protector and shepherd” (CCC 336).

The Latin Angele Dei is usually traced to the eleventh century and attributed to Reginald of Canterbury, a Benedictine monk of Saint Augustine’s Abbey who died around 1109. As with many old prayers, the attribution is a tradition rather than a certainty. What is certain is that it spread through the monasteries, then through the parishes, and that by the nineteenth century it was printed, in its rhymed English form, in every Catholic prayer book and on countless holy cards.

The angels themselves got their feast later. In 1608 Pope Paul V allowed a feast of the Guardian Angels, and in 1670 Pope Clement X extended it to the whole Church and fixed it on October 2, a few days after the feast of Saint Michael. It is still kept on October 2, which is why more people look for the prayer in October than in any other month.

The Guardian Angel Prayer in Seven Paintings

Each line of the prayer has been painted by a great master. Here are seven of them, in the order of the words.

1. “Angel of God”: The Liberation of Saint Peter by Raphael (1514)

The story of the angel who freed Peter is the clearest image of a guardian angel in the New Testament, and Raphael painted it as a drama of light. In the centre, behind the iron bars, the angel bursts into the cell and wakes Peter, who is asleep between two soldiers in armour. On the right the same angel leads him out, still half dreaming, past guards who have fallen asleep on the steps. On the left the soldiers wake too late, under a crescent moon, by the light of a torch. Raphael painted the fresco in 1514 in the Vatican, in the room known as the Room of Heliodorus; Pope Julius II, who had commissioned the room, had for years been cardinal of San Pietro in Vincoli, Saint Peter in Chains. It was after this rescue that Rhoda knocked at the door and the disciples said, “It is his angel.”

2. “My Guardian Dear”: The Guardian Angel by Antonio de Pereda (1646)

“Dear” is the tenderest word in the prayer, and the Madrid painter Antonio de Pereda gave it a face. His angel is crowned with flowers, dressed in white and rose, and lays one hand on the head of a small child, who reaches up as a child reaches up to its mother. The other hand points to heaven. Behind her, almost hidden, a horned devil crouches against a globe, the world he hoped to keep, and a ruined building stands in the distance. Pereda is best known for his still lifes about the vanity of earthly things; here the vanity is pushed into the background, and the whole picture belongs to the child. The canvas is today in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.

3. “To Whom God’s Love Commits Me Here”: The Guardian Angel by Marcantonio Franceschini (1716)

The prayer says that the angel did not choose us: God’s love entrusted us to him. The Bolognese painter Marcantonio Franceschini painted exactly that, an angel on a mission. He flies low over the landscape in a swirl of white and gold, one arm raised toward the sky from which he was sent, the other hand holding the hand of a small child who runs beside him with his free arm stretched out, laughing. Nothing in the picture is heavy: the sea is calm, the sky is clear, the child is not afraid. It hangs today in the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

4. “Ever This Day Be at My Side”: Tobias and the Angel, Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (about 1470 to 1475)

The Bible’s longest story of an angel walking beside a human being is the book of Tobit. The young Tobias sets out on a long journey for his blind father, and a stranger offers to go with him. They walk together for weeks, catch a great fish in the river Tigris, and only at the end does the stranger reveal his name: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels” (Tobit 12:15). In this small panel from the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, the archangel and the boy walk arm in arm, Tobias with the fish on a string, a little white dog trotting at their heels. Florentine merchants, who sent their sons on long journeys for the family business, loved this subject. Some historians think the young Leonardo da Vinci, then in Verrocchio’s workshop, painted the dog and the fish, as he painted the famous angel of the Baptism of Christ. Read more about the archangel Raphael, and the prayer to Saint Raphael for travellers.

5. “To Light and Guard”: The Guardian Angel by Domenichino (1615)

To guard is a soldier’s word, and in Domenichino‘s painting the angel stands between a child and his enemy. The boy, in a blue tunic, joins his hands in prayer and looks up. The angel, in a golden robe, points to heaven with one hand and with the other holds up a tall shield behind the child. On the right, outside the shield, the devil crouches with a pitchfork and peers round it, waiting for a chance that will not come. The angel shows the way up and closes the way in: that is what “to light and guard” means. The canvas is signed and dated 1615 on the carved tomb at the left, and it hangs in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.

6. “To Rule and Guide”: The Guardian Angel by Bartolome Esteban Murillo (about 1665)

The last line of the prayer asks the angel to rule and guide, and no painting shows guidance more simply than this one by Murillo. A tall angel in a golden robe strides forward and points up to a burst of light; a small child in a white shirt holds his hand and follows, looking up at him with complete trust. Murillo painted it for the Capuchin friars of Seville. In 1814 the friars gave it to Seville Cathedral, in thanks for the shelter the cathedral had given to their treasures during the French invasion, and it still hangs there today, above its own altar.

7. The Prayer of Children: The Guardian Angel by Bernhard Plockhorst (late 19th century)

For millions of Catholics, this is the guardian angel. The German painter Bernhard Plockhorst (1825 to 1907) showed two small children walking at the edge of a cliff, one reaching for flowers, the other holding on, while a great angel in white and blue hovers behind them with open arms. Printed on holy cards, calendars and bedroom pictures, it hung for decades above the beds of children in Europe and in America, who said “Angel of God, my guardian dear” before sleep. It is not the greatest painting in this list, but it may be the most loved.

What the Guardian Angel Prayer Means, Line by Line

Angel of God. We do not speak to a lucky charm or a spirit of our own making. The angel belongs to God, and comes from him.

My guardian dear. The angel is personal: not an angel, but mine. And he is dear, a friend rather than a guard.

To whom God’s love commits me here. The reason for the angel is love. God entrusts each of us to him “here”, on earth, for the length of this life.

Ever this day be at my side. We ask for company, not for a miracle. The angel’s first work is to be there.

To light and guard. To light is to help us see what is true and good; to guard is to keep us from harm, of body and of soul.

To rule and guide. We ask the angel to steer us, as a pilot steers a ship, toward the end of the journey.

Amen. The whole prayer is twenty-nine words long, one breath, and it holds a whole theology of providence.

How to Pray the Guardian Angel Prayer

• In the morning: say “ever this day” when you get up, before the day begins.
• At night: say “ever this night” at bedtime, after the Hail Mary, as so many families do.
• On a journey: before a trip, add the prayer to Saint Raphael, the angel of Tobias.
• In danger: like Psalm 91, it is a prayer of protection, and the prayer to Saint Michael goes well with it, and so does the morning armour of St. Patrick’s Breastplate.

Teaching the prayer to children

It is often the first prayer a child learns, with the Our Father and the Hail Mary, because it rhymes and because it is about someone a child can imagine. Say it together every night with the “night” version, and every morning with the “day” version: the child learns that the angel is there both times. Point to a picture of a guardian angel while you pray, one of the paintings above or the printable card below. Children also love colouring angels: our angel coloring pages are free to print.

A Free Printable Guardian Angel Prayer Card

We have made the Guardian Angel prayer into an illuminated prayer card, in the style of a medieval book of hours: a guardian angel holding a praying child under a starry sky, a gold initial A, the prayer in English and in Latin, and the verse of Psalm 91. The large letters make it easy for a child to read.

 

The angel of the card is an original painting made for jesuschrist.pictures: a guardian angel holding a child in prayer, under the same starry sky. It also exists as a canvas.

More prayer cards, novenas and Scripture printables are gathered in our free Christian printables.

Conclusion

The Guardian Angel prayer is twenty-nine words long, and it is often the first prayer a child ever says alone. It asks for very little: company, light, protection, a hand to follow. The painters understood how much that is. Raphael filled a prison cell with the angel’s light, Pereda let him lay a hand on a child’s head, Verrocchio’s workshop sent him walking arm in arm with a boy on the road, and Murillo had him lead a child by the hand toward the light. Each of them painted one line of the same promise: you are not alone.

To go further among the angels, see who the archangels are and their mission, or our guide to the archangels explained. Mary, the Queen of Angels, has her own prayer of the same kind in the Hail Holy Queen.

The Paintings in This Article

Line of the prayer	Painting	Artist	Date	Medium	Location
Angel of God	The Liberation of Saint Peter	Raphael	1514	Fresco	Room of Heliodorus, Vatican
My guardian dear	The Guardian Angel	Antonio de Pereda	1646	Oil on canvas	Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
To whom God’s love commits me here	The Guardian Angel	Marcantonio Franceschini	1716	Oil on canvas	Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Ever this day be at my side	Tobias and the Angel	Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio	About 1470 to 1475	Tempera on panel	National Gallery, London
To light and guard	The Guardian Angel	Domenichino	1615	Oil on canvas	Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
To rule and guide	The Guardian Angel	Bartolome Esteban Murillo	About 1665	Oil on canvas	Seville Cathedral
The prayer of children	The Guardian Angel	Bernhard Plockhorst	Late 19th century	Oil on canvas	Known through prints and holy cards

Important Facts About the Guardian Angel Prayer

• It is also called the Angel of God prayer, from its first words, and in Latin the Angele Dei.
• The Latin original is usually attributed to Reginald of Canterbury, an English Benedictine monk of the eleventh century.
• It has two versions, “ever this day” for the morning and “ever this night” for bedtime.
• The feast of the Guardian Angels is kept on October 2, extended to the whole Church by Pope Clement X in 1670.
• The belief in guardian angels rests on Scripture: Psalm 91:11, Matthew 18:10 and Acts 12:15.
• The prayer is twenty-nine words long in English, short enough for a small child to learn.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the words to the guardian angel 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. At bedtime, “ever this day” becomes “ever this night”.

Who wrote the guardian angel prayer?

The prayer was first written in Latin, as the Angele Dei, and it is usually attributed to Reginald of Canterbury, a Benedictine monk who died around 1109. The rhymed English version became the standard form in Catholic prayer books in the nineteenth century.

Is there a guardian angel prayer for night?

Yes. The night version is the same prayer with one word changed: Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen. Many families say it at bedtime after the Hail Mary.

Which angel protects children?

According to Catholic teaching, every child has a guardian angel of his own. Jesus said of the little ones that “in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father” (Matthew 18:10). The archangel Raphael, who walked with the young Tobias, is also invoked as the protector of travellers and of the young.

How can I find my guardian angel’s name?

The Church does not encourage giving names to angels. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, published by the Vatican in 2001, asks Catholics not to assign names to the angels, except Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, whose names are in Scripture. You can simply call him “my guardian angel”, as the prayer does.

Can you buy a guardian angel painting or prayer card?

You can buy a guardian angel painting at jesuschrist.pictures, in our shop, including the guardian angel holding a praying child that illustrates our prayer card, as a canvas ready to hang, and the illuminated prayer to Saint Raphael as a poster. The Guardian Angel prayer card itself is free to print from this page, in US Letter, A4 and pocket size.