St. Peter Faber, S.J., one of the co-founders of the Society of Jesus, always prayed to the guardian angels of a locality, where he was going to exercise his priestly ministry. Most of us, I surmise, were taught in our childhood to pray to our personal guardian angel and those night prayers probably remained in our memories for some time. Personally, I have to admit that I have let go of that devotion and I am not necessarily proud of it.

Although it has never been defined by the Church as Catholic doctrine, devotion to the Guardian Angels has a long tradition in the Church. In today’s gospel reading Jesus does refer to the little children’s “angels in heaven”. In the Old Testament we read on more than one occasion that the angel of the Lord appeared and talked to someone like Abraham or Gideon, but then the person visited responds by addressing the angel as Lord or God. As far as I know, within Catholic Theology “angelology” is far from clearly or completely established.

But there is a scene in the very beginning of the book of Genesis [4: 8], where Cain, who had just murdered his brother Abel and was being questioned by God about it, responds with a question of his own: Am I my brother’s keeper? In a way, he was telling God that he did not consider himself his brother’s “guardian angel”. God did not answer Cain’s question directly, but God’s reproach and condemnation of Cain’s deed amounts to an affirmative answer. We may not consider ourselves our brothers’ or sisters’ “guardian angels”, yet we do have some responsibility not only not to hurt them, but also to help them in their various needs to the extent that we can.