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Access the Power of Your Guardian Angel! (advice from Saint John Bosco!)

Towards the end of 1844, Don Bosco was busy finishing a book promoting devotion to the guardian angels. He was very grateful to God for the privilege of having been given a guardian angel. He quoted countless times: “To His Angels he has given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. Upon their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” (Ps. 90, 1112)

He had a fervent love and deep devotion to his guardian angel, whose feast day he celebrated yearly. He was so convinced that his angel was ever at his side that one might say he saw him with his own eyes. He would greet him several times daily with the Angel of God prayer. Throughout his life, he greatly trusted in his protection. He entrusted himself and his boys to their guardian angels. Indeed, his guardian angel certainly assisted him in founding and governing all his undertakings.

One day, Don Bosco told the boys how Blessed Joan of the Cross had been privileged to see her guardian angel from childhood. When she became the convent’s superior, she ruled it wonderfully through every difficult situation. Whenever any infraction of the rule occurred, the angel would suggest ways and means of correcting those concerned.

When Don Bosco told this story, we wondered whether he was also favored with the same privileges. In any case, he knew how to instill great reverence and love for their guardian angels in his boys.

Don Bosco often told the story of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael to instill trust in guardian angels, the miracle of the three young men who remained unscathed amid the flames of the furnace in Babylon and other stories abounding in Holy Scripture and church history.

He never tired of speaking about this most dedicated heavenly friend in his sermons. “Be good,” he would say. “This will make your guardian angel happy. When physical or spiritual sorrows and misfortunes afflict you, turn to your guardian angel with strong trust, and he will help you. How many people in mortal sin were saved from death by their angels so they might have a chance for confession? Woe to those who give scandal! The guardian angels of innocent victims will cry out for vengeance to God.”

In echoes of his teachings, we find a call to honor our guardian angels on specific days.

Firstly, he said the Church sets aside Tuesdays as a day of special remembrance of our guardian angels. Don Bosco suggested practicing some special mortification in your angel’s honor on these days. We could offer this penance for the conversion of sinners, as Our Lady often requested during her Fatima apparitions.

Secondly, your birthday marks the beginning of when your Guardian Angel took charge of you. So, on this day, renew the promises you made in his presence at Baptism, namely, that you will love and imitate Jesus Christ and obey His Holy Law.

And lastly, on the first day of every month, he suggested meditating on the Four Last Things by seriously considering the purpose for which God created you.

This advice extended throughout Don Bosco’s entire life. Even in those early years of the oratory, his boys faithfully followed his counsel about the guardian angles.

One day, an astonishing incident confirmed their good father’s instructions. On one Sunday, the boys were all gathered in the sacristy of St. Francis of Assisi Church. Don Bosco gave each boy a holy picture with a prayer to the Guardian Angel. He told them: “Pray to your Guardian Angel. Invoke his aid if you find yourself in any serious danger of body or soul, and I assure you that he will help and protect you.”

A few days later, one boy, who was an apprentice bricklayer, was working on a new building. A support suddenly snapped as he went to and fro on the scaffold. He felt the wooden planks on which he and two others were standing give way. At the first ominous splintering of wood, he realized that there was no escape. The scaffold collapsed, and the three boys plunged from the fourth story to the street below amid a rain of planks, bricks and stones.

Falling from such a height meant certain death. However, this good boy remembered Don Bosco’s words while falling and loudly invoked his Guardian Angel. “O my good Angel, help me!” His prayer saved him. Of the three boys that fell, one died instantly, and another, critically injured, died shortly after reaching the hospital.

As the people rushed to the young apprentice, believing him dead, he scrambled to his feet safe and sound, without even a scratch. He lost no time in climbing up again to help rebuild the scaffold.

Access the Power of Your Guardian Angel! (advice from Saint John Bosco!)