Guardian angel

In Rabbinic literature, the Rabbis expressed the notion that there are indeed guardian angels appointed by God to watch over people.

Rashi on Daniel 10:7 "Our Sages of blessed memory said that although a person does not see something of which he is terrified, his guardian angel, who is in heaven, does see it; therefore, he becomes terrified."[2]

Lailah is an angel of the night in charge of conception and pregnancy. Lailah serves as a guardian angel throughout a person's life and at death, leads the soul into the afterlife.[3]

According to Rabbi Leo Trepp, in late Judaism, the belief developed that, "the people have a heavenly representative, a guardian angel. Every human being has a guardian angel. Previously the term `Malakh', angel, simply meant messenger of God."[4]

Chabad believes that people might indeed have guardian angels. For Chabad, God watches over people and makes decisions directly with their prayers and it is in this context that the guardian angels are sent back and forth as emissaries to aid in this task. Thus, they are not prayed to directly, but the angels are part of the workings of how the prayer and response comes about.[5]

In the view of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz:

The nature of the angel is to be, to a degree, as its name in Hebrew signifies, a messenger, to constitute a permanent contact between our world of action and the higher worlds. An angel's missions go in two directions: it may serve as an emissary of God downward… and it may also serve as the one carries things upwards from below... The angel cannot reveal its true form to man, whose being, senses and instruments of perception belong only to the world of action — it continues to belong to a different dimension even when apprehended in one form or another... The angel who is sent to us from another world does not always have a significance or impact beyond the normal laws of physical nature. Indeed it often happens that the angel precisely reveals itself in nature, in the ordinary common-sense world of causality.[6]

According to Saint Jerome, the concept of guardian angels is in the "mind of the Church". He stated: "how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it".[1]

The first Christian theologian to outline a specific scheme for guardian angels was Honorius of Autun in the 12th century. He said that every soul was assigned a guardian angel the moment it was put into a body. Scholastic theologians augmented and ordered the taxonomy of angelic guardians. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Honorius and believed that it was the lowest order of angels who served as guardians, and his view was most successful in popular thought, but Duns Scotus said that any angel is bound by duty and obedience to the Divine Authority to accept the mission to which that angel is assigned. In the 15th century, the Feast of the Guardian Angels was added to the official calendar of Catholic holidays.

In his March 31, 1997 Regina Caeli address, Pope John Paul II referred to the concept of guardian angel and concluded the address with the statement: "Let us invoke the Queen of angels and saints, that she may grant us, supported by our guardian angels, to be authentic witnesses to the Lord's paschal mystery".[7]

In his 2014 homily for the Feast of Holy Guardian Angels, October 2, Pope Francis told those gathered for daily Mass to be like children who pay attention to their “traveling companion.” “No one journeys alone and no one should think that they are alone,” the Pope said.[8] During the Morning Meditation in the chapel of Santa Marta, the Pope noted that oftentimes, we have the feeling that "I should do this, this is not right, be careful." This, he said, "is the voice of" our guardian angel.[9] "According to Church tradition we all have an angel with us, who guards us..." The Pope instructed each, "Do not rebel, follow his advice!" The Pope urged that this "doctrine on the angels" not be considered "a little imaginative". It is rather one of "truth". It is "what Jesus, what God said: 'I send an angel before you, to guard you, to accompany you on the way, so you will not make a mistake'".[9]

Pope Francis concluded with a series of questions so that each one can examine his/her own conscience: "How is my relationship with my guardian angel? Do I listen to him? Do I bid him good day in the morning? Do I tell him: 'guard me while I sleep?' Do I speak with him? Do I ask his advice? ...Each one of us can do so in order to evaluate “the relationship with this angel that the Lord has sent to guard me and to accompany me on the path, and who always beholds the face of the Father who is in heaven."[10]

The celebration of the Guardian Angel at Fondachelli-Fantina on second Sunday of July, Sicily

There was an old Irish custom that suggested including in bedtime prayers a request for the Blessed Mother to tell one the name of their guardian angel, and supposedly within a few days one would "know" the name by which they could address their angel. An old Dominican tradition encouraged each novice to give a name to their Guardian Angel so that they could speak to him by name and thus feel closer and more friendly with him.[11] The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments discourages assigning names to angels beyond those revealed in scripture: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.[12]

In Cardinal Newman's 1865 poem The Dream of Gerontius, the departed soul is met by his guardian angel who recites:[13]

My work is done
My task is o'er,
And so I come
Taking it home
For the crown is won
Alleluia
For evermore.

My Father gave
In charge to me
This child of earth
E'en from its birth
To serve and save.
Alleluia,
And saved is he.

This child of clay
To me was given,
To rear and train
By sorrow and pain
In the narrow way,
Alleluia,
From earth to heaven.

Guardian angel, German postcard, 1900

According to Aquinas, "On this road man is threatened by many dangers both from within and without, and therefore as guardians are appointed for men who have to pass by an unsafe road, so an angel is assigned to each man as long as he is a wayfarer." By means of an angel, God is said to introduce images and suggestions leading a person to do what is right.[14]

Father Giovangiuseppe Califano recounted how, one day, a newly appointed bishop confessed to Pope John XXIII “that he could not sleep at night due to an anxiety which was caused by the responsibility of his office.” “The pope told him, ‘You know, I also thought the same when I was elected pope. But one day, I dreamed about my guardian angel, and it told me not to take everything so seriously.’”[15] Pope John attributed the idea of calling Second Vatican Council to an inspiration from his guardian angel.[16]

Saint Gemma Galgani, a Roman Catholic mystic, stated that she had interacted with and spoken with her guardian angel.[17] Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was known to instruct his parishioners to send him their guardian angel to communicate a trouble or issue to him when they could not travel to get to him or another urgency existed.[18]

Justin Fontenot of the Prayerful Anglican states that the "guardian angel concept is clearly present in the Old Testament, and its development is well marked" and he continues, stating that in "the New Testament the concept of guardian angel may be noted with greater precision".[19] Fontenot also cites Jerome, a Church Father, who said: "'how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it.' (Comm. in Matt., xviii, lib. II)."[19] In the same vein, Of the Intercession and Invocation of Angels and Saints, printed in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, held that "Many learned Protestants think it probable that each of the faithful, at least, has a guardian angel. It seems certainly proved by Scripture. Zanchius says that all the Fathers held this opinion."[20] Building upon Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers, Richard Montagu, the Anglican Bishop of Norwich in the 17th century, stated that "It is an opinion received, and hath been long, that if not every man, each son of Adam, yet sure each Christian man regenerate by water and the Holy Ghost, at least from the day of his regeneration and new birth unto God, if not from the time of his coming into the world, hath by God's appointment and assignation an Angel Guardian to attend upon him at all assayes, in all his ways, at his going forth, at his coming home".[21]

Sergei Bulgakov writes that the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that:

each man has a guardian angel who stands before the face of the Lord. This guardian angel is not only a friend and a protector, who preserves from evil and who sends good thought; the image of God is reflected in the creature--angels and men--in such a way that angels are celestial prototypes of men. Guardian angels are especially our spiritual kin. Scripture testified that the guardian ship and direction of the elements, of places, of peoples, of societies, are confided to the guardian angels of the cosmos, whose very substance adds something of harmony to the elements they watch over.[22]

As such, before the Eastern Orthodox liturgy of the Communion of the Faithful, a prayer asks "For an angel of peace, a faithful guide, a guardian of our souls and bodies, let us entreat the Lord. Amen."[23]

The Reverend Donald Schneider, a Lutheran priest, wrote that the concept of a guardian angel is found in Psalm 91, which includes a verse stating “For [God] will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone”.[24] He states that Martin Luther may have based Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer found in the Small Catechism on this text, as these prayers include the supplication "Let your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me."[24][25]

The Rev. Dr. John W. Hanner, a Methodist minister and theologian wrote on the topic of guardian angels in his Angelic Study, stating that:[26]

Perhaps every Christian has a guardian angel. It may be that there is one angel to every Christian, or a score of them; or one may have charge of a score of Christians. Some of the ancient fathers believed that every city had a guardian angel, while others assigned one to every house and every man. None of us know how much we are indebted to angels for our deliverance from imminent peril, disease, and malicious plots of men and devils. Where the pious die, angels are to carry the soul to heaven, though it be a soul of a Lazarus."[26]

In May and June 1743, Methodists experienced persecution in Wednesbury and Walsall and the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was threatened with death by a mob who dragged him in the rain; however, "Wesley escaped unharmed" and he "believed that he had been protected by his guardian angel".[27]

In Reformed Dogmatics, Heinrich Heppe states that some Reformed theologians espoused the view of guardian angels, including Bucan, who taught:[28]

That as a rule to each elect person a certain particular good angel is appointed by God to guard him, may be gathered from Christ's words, Mt. 18. 10, where it is said 'Their angels do continually behold the face of my Father.' Also from Ac. 12.15 where the believers who had assembled in Mark's house said of Peter knocking at the door, 'It is his angel'. These believers were speaking according to the opinion received among the people of God."[28]

18th century rendition of a guardian angel