The guardian angel and the angel's day

Why is it said that the day of the commemoration of the saint whose name is given to a newly baptised person is also that person's guardian angel's day?

The giving of a name to the newly baptised has great significance. The holy fathers give great importance to the giving of a name in the bringing up of a child. The holy father John Chrysostom disapproves of the custom by which a child is named in honour of a relative or of a literary hero. But if the relative is a saint, or has rendered great service to the homeland, then nothing stands in the way of this custom.

But St John Chrysostom insistently calls on us to name a newly baptised child in honour of one of the Christian saints. In the holy father's words, the child will always have the saint's example before its eyes, and the desire will awaken in the child to imitate that saint, to feed its own soul with this excellent spiritual food.

Let us say that the child was still given the name of some relative, or another name. Then the child must without fail know about the saint whose name the newly baptised one bears. The parents and the godparent (godparents) should pray before that saint and ask a blessing for the newly baptised.

It will be good if an icon of that saint is hung by the bed of the baptised infant or youth. And later, when the baptised one has grown up, the life of that saint should be told to them, or they should be read about it.

After being named with a saint's name, that saint becomes the special protector and advocate of the newly baptised, that is, an intercessor in prayer before God.

But at baptism God appoints and assigns an angel to every person. This angel is called the guardian angel.

So both the saint is a protector and the angel is a guardian for the Christian. For this reason the day of the commemoration of the saint whose name the baptised person bears is also called the day of the guardian angel.

We should know well that the patron saint is called a guardian angel only conditionally.

In reality the saint protects the Christian because the saint's name was given to that Christian at baptism. After their spiritual birth the baptised one became the namesake of that saint.

The guardian angel, on the other hand, is the angel appointed by God, who through the celebration of the holy mystery of baptism was assigned to the person by God, so that this heavenly bodiless being might guard the baptised day and night and keep them from the evil one and from temptation, might give them peace and strengthen them, and might shed light upon their soul, heart and mind. On the day of Judgement too the guardian angel defends and strengthens us together with the other bodiless angels. And our guardian angel entreats the heavenly King to be merciful to us and to forgive us our sins, that we may escape eternal torment and be counted worthy of eternal blessedness, the Kingdom of heaven.

This is how that angel, whom the Lord God who cares for us appoints at baptism, protects the Christian and helps them.

Let us look closely at the words with which we address the guardian angel in the morning prayers and in the prayers before sleep. From these prayers it is clearly seen what we expect from our guardian angel.

In the morning prayers we offer a separate prayer to the saint whose name was given to you at baptism. In this prayer we address that saint by name; it is even shown in brackets — (name)!

But in the prayer to the guardian angel there is no such indication; here we do not need a name, because the guardian angel, as has been said, is an invisible, bodiless heavenly being appointed by God at baptism, and has no name of its own.

Let us then be thankful and cry aloud to our sweet Lord:

I thank Thee, O Lord!