Do you imagine there is a moment when your guardian angel simply leaves you?

That in the most terrifying instant of your existence when death tears you from the body?

This celestial creature who has accompanied you since your first breath vanishes into the light.

Its mission finally complete.

Padre Peio saw the opposite.

He saw what happens when the soul crosses the veil.

And what he witnessed about the guardian angel in that moment forever changed his understanding of companionship, judgment, and mercy.

Because the truth is not that the angel leaves you.

The truth is that for the first time you finally see it.

Padre Peio carried the stigmata of Christ and saw through the curtain between this world and the next with a clarity few mortals have ever known.

He did not merely believe in the existence of angels.

He conversed with them, sent them as messengers and saw them working in both life and death.

Gerardo Dearo, who spoke at length with Padre Peio in 1943, recorded that the saint had exact knowledge of the state of a soul after death, including the duration of pain until total purification was reached.

He did not speculate.

He saw and among all the realities he witnessed, one of the most profound was what happened to the guardian angel at the moment of death.

Not a departure, but a revelation.

Padre Peio described a vision that occurred repeatedly before his mystical eyes.

A scene that unfolded in a realm invisible to the living, but absolutely real.

He saw the soul separate from the body in the instant of death.

Not like smoke rising, but like something being pulled out of a tight cocoon.

And there, standing beside the soul, always beside, never behind, was the guardian angel.

But something changed in that moment.

Throughout the person’s entire life, the angel remained partially obscured.

A presence felt but rarely seen.

Now in death, the angel became fully visible to the soul, radiant, trembling with a beauty that hurt.

The soul, newly freed from flesh, turned and saw for the first time the face that had been watching it every single day of its existence.

This was not a joyful reunion for every soul.

Padre Peio witnessed souls who recoiled at the sight of their guardian angel.

Not because the angel had changed, but because they finally understood what they had ignored.

The angel’s face reflected back every moment of protection rejected.

Every whispered warning unheeded, every grace offered and turned away.

One soul Padre Peio saw stood frozen, staring at its angel with something close to horror.

not at the angel’s beauty, but at the sudden, crushing recognition of how many times that radiant being had tried to stop it from falling.

The angel had been there in the moment before the lie.

The angel had been there when the hand reached for what was not its own.

The angel had been there in the silence when prayer should have risen, and the soul, looking at its guardian now, saw every single intervention it had pushed aside.

But Padre Peio also saw something else unfold in that moment.

The angel did not leave.

Catholic teaching makes clear that the guardian angel’s mission extends beyond death, continuing until the soul achieves union with God.

St. Alawishius Gonzaga taught that at the moment the soul leaves the body, it is accompanied and consoled by its guardian angel so that the soul can present itself confidently before the judgment seat of God.

The angel according to this saint presents the merits of Christ so that the soul can find support in them at the moment of particular judgment.

Padre Peio witnessed this truth in action.

He saw angels standing with trembling souls before the throne of God.

Not as prosecutors but as advocates holding up every single moment when the soul had turned toward grace, even if only for a breath.

When a soul was sent to purgatory, Padre Peio saw the guardian angel follow it there.

The angel could not enter the flames of purification.

Those fires belong to the soul alone, but it remained outside interceding before the throne of God, seeking prayers from the living to shorten its wards suffering.

Padre Peio told one woman whose brother had died.

“What consolation when at the moment of death you will see this angel who accompanied you through life and was so liberal in maternal care.”

He urged people to invoke their guardian angels constantly during life so that when death came the sight of that familiar face would bring comfort rather than shame.

The mechanics of what Padre Peio saw reveal a profound spiritual reality.

The guardian angel is not merely a protector during earthly life.

It is a witness.

Every choice, every prayer, every turning toward or away from God is recorded not in some cold ledger, but in the living memory of the angel who stood beside you.

When death comes and the soul finally sees its angel fully, it sees itself reflected back through divine eyes.

This is why some souls weep with joy at the sight and others shrink back in grief.

The angel’s face becomes a mirror of the life lived, showing not condemnation, but truth.

the truth of how close salvation always was, how many times grace reached out, how often the angel tried to pull the soul back from the edge.

Padre Peio described one particular vision that haunted him.

A soul that had lived carelessly, not wickedly, just carelessly, seeing its guardian angel for the first time after death.

The angel’s face was sorrowful, but still radiant.

The soul asked, “Why did you never warn me?”

And the angel with a voice that sounded like distant thunder replied, “I warned you every day. You called it coincidence. I warned you every night. You called it worry. I stood between you and destruction a thousand times. And you never once turned to see who had caught you.”

The soul wept then, not because the angel condemned it, but because it finally understood how deeply it had been loved, and how completely it had ignored that love.

This is the terror and the beauty of what Padre Peio saw.

The guardian angel becomes after death the living proof of God’s relentless pursuit of the soul.

It is not enough for God to offer grace from a distance.

He assigns a celestial being to each person.

A creature of pure spirit whose sole task is to guide that one soul home.

When the soul finally sees its angel in death, it cannot deny that it was accompanied every moment of its life.

It cannot claim it was abandoned or forgotten.

The angel’s presence, now fully visible, becomes an undeniable witness to the fact that God never stopped reaching.

Padre Pio also spoke of what happens when a soul enters heaven.

He said, “The guardian angel does not disappear even then, but its role transforms. No longer a guardian against sin and temptation, it becomes a companion in worship, leading the soul deeper into the knowledge of God.”

“The angel that once whispered warnings now sings praises alongside the soul it protected.”

“This is the angel’s ultimate joy, not merely to guard, but to present the soul it guarded before the throne of God and say, ‘This one made it home.’”

But what of the souls that reject God finally and completely?

Padre Peio grew silent when asked about this.

Those who knew him said he wept when contemplating it.

He would only say that the guardian angel’s grief at such a loss was beyond human comprehension.

That even in hell, the soul would remember the face of the angel it had refused to follow.

The angel cannot enter hell, for it is a creature of light, and hell is the absence of all light.

But the memory of the angel remains with the soul forever.

A memory of what could have been, a face that loved without end, turned away without reason.

This is why Padre Peio urged everyone who would listen to cultivate a relationship with their guardian angel now in life while there is still time.

He would tell his spiritual children, “Do not wait until death to meet your angel. Speak to it now. Thank it now. Follow it now.”

He knew that the souls who recognized their angels most joyfully in death were those who had acknowledged them most faithfully in life.

The angel’s face at death would be familiar.

Beloved, not a shock, but a homecoming.

Padre Peio’s vision reveals a truth that should shake every living person.

You are never alone.

Not for a single second.

The guardian angel sees every hidden act, every secret thought, every moment of struggle and surrender.

This is not surveillance, but love.

The kind of love that refuses to look away even when the beloved turns aside.

And at death, when the veil is torn away and the soul sees clearly for the first time, the angel’s face will be the first thing it beholds.

Not as a stranger, but as the most faithful friend it ever had, whether it knew the angel or not.

What does this mean for you?

Alive and breathing and still wrapped in flesh.

It means that the choices you make now are being witnessed by a being of pure light who loves you more than you can imagine.

It means that every time you resist temptation, your angel rejoices.

Every time you choose prayer over distraction, your angel draws closer.

Every time you turn toward God, even in the smallest way, your angel is building a case for you, gathering evidence of grace that it will present at your particular judgment.

But it also means that every ignored prompting, every silenced conscience, every deliberate turning away is being seen by the one who will stand beside you when you die.

Padre Pio’s urgent counsel was this.

Live now in such a way that when you see your guardian angel’s face at the moment of your death, you will recognize it.

Speak to your angel daily.

Thank it for protections you will never know about.

For disasters averted, for graces channeled, for whispers that pulled you back from edges you did not even see.

Ask your angel to pray for you, to intercede for you, to make you sensitive to its guidance.

Because when death comes, and it will come, the face of your angel will either be your greatest comfort or your deepest regret.

The angel’s love does not change, but your response to that love determines whether its face at death will be a mirror of joy or a mirror of sorrow.

The vision Padre Peio saw was not meant to terrify, though it contains terror.

It was meant to awaken, to remind every soul that it is not wandering through life unaccompanied, not stumbling through darkness alone.

The guardian angel is there, has always been there, will always be there until the final choice is made.

And at the moment of death, when the soul is pulled free from the body and turns in that eternal instant to see what awaits it, the first face it will behold is the face that has been watching over it since before it could remember.

The face of the angel who never left, never gave up, never stopped praying that this soul, this one precious soul, would choose to come home.

Do you imagine your guardian angel leaves you when you die?

Padre Peio saw the truth.