Holy Guardian Angels: Ever this Day My Homeschool Guide

On October 2, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

Angels appear in the Bible about 300 times, and many of them are guardian angels! St. Luke tells us in the Bible that our guardian angels can act as channels of grace from God. God gives us the graces we need when we ask for our guardian angel to help us to choose the good and to overcome any sinful desires.

One of the most amazing accounts in the Bible is the appearance of an angel to console Jesus. When Jesus was experiencing His sweating of Blood, His Agony in the Garden, we read

“And there appeared to Him an angel from Heaven, strengthening Him” [Luke 22:43].

Angels visited Jesus in the garden to console Him in His human nature, to strengthen His human nature to overcome the fear and dread of the pain and agony of the crucifixion.

In Father Hardon’s book Meditations on the Angels, he writes: “The angels are not only messengers of God’s wisdom; they are also powers sent by God to strengthen our human wills.”

Our guardian angels are holy messengers of God’s wisdom and of His power to strengthen our human wills!

Most people don’t think much about the protection of their guardian angel until, in a dangerous occasion, they suddenly exclaim, “My guardian angel was protecting me!”

How many times in a dangerous situation does our guardian angel help us? Even when we don’t ask for the help of our guardian angel, how many of us are able to report that our “guardian Angel was looking out for us” by protecting us from danger?

Do we remember our guardian angel only when we are in danger? Perhaps Jesus is reminding us through dangerous occasions that we must rely on Him to help us, that we have a guardian angel to protect us, and that consequently we must thank our guardian angel as His helper.

While we emphasize the fact that our guardian angel guards us, the primary function of our guardian angel is to guide us, to point us in the right direction, and to help us make the right decisions for good and not evil.

It is the teaching of the Church that guardian angels constantly see the Face of God! It is not a one-way communication.

Father Hardon wrote in Meditations on the Angels that guardian angels are “communicators from God to human minds to enlighten them on the Mind and Will of God,” and that these good angels are “divine agents in transmitting to us the Will of God.”

It has long been a tradition for Catholic families to include a bedtime prayer to their guardian angels. “Angel of God, My Guardian Dear, to whom God’s love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule, to guide. Amen.”

Those two small words, “to light” can be translated by us homeschooling moms to include “enlightening” us parents in the best way to teach each child, and “enlightening” each child to understand the lessons.

As homeschooling parents, recognizing that our guardian angels stand by our sides to guide us with our teaching, let us ask them to enlighten us about how to teach each child each subject.

And since our guardian angels guide us with raising our children in the Faith of Jesus Christ, we and our children need to pray together daily to our angels for guidance in learning the Faith as well as protection from dangers, especially dangers which may arise from something read or studied.

St. Michael the Archangel was not a guardian angel. However, since God sent an archangel to cast Satan to Hell, it would seem that God uses good angels to fight against bad angels. God intends for our guardian angel to help rid us of temptations which can arise from bad angels “seeking the ruin of souls.”

We should ask our guardian angel to help us and our children in the battles against temptation to sin, which can come from bad angels.

There are many stories in the Bible about God sending angels to guide, to guard, and to protect people in their travels, in making decisions about marriage, or about finding cures, as in the case of Tobias.

These hundreds of miraculous helps and cures have resulted in the Church teaching us in the Catechism that guardian angels are given to each one of us, to guard and to guide us in every single step, every single day. The Catholic Church teaches that our guardian angel guides us from the second we are conceived to the last second we breathe on Earth.

Perhaps our angels will continue to be with us in Heaven for all eternity.

“Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the counsel of Thy ineffable goodness has appointed to all the Faithful, from their mother’s womb, a special Angel guardian of their body and soul, grant that I may so love and honor him whom Thou has so mercifully given me, that protected by the bounty of Thy grace and by his assistance, I may merit to behold with him and all the angelic hosts, the glory of Thy countenance in the heavenly country. Thou Who lives and reigns world without end. Amen.”*

*A Prayerbook of Favorite Litanies, Father Albert J. Hebert