The unusual Catholic custom of adding “S.A.G.” to your letters

One of the wonderful things about the Catholic faith is its myriad of rich traditions. However, one tradition, recently highlighted on Instagram by retrograde.convert, demonstrates a little-known use of combining saintly intercessions with modern communication.

The post below explains how Catholics in the past would write S.A.G. on the backs of their envelopes in the hope they'd safely reach their destination.

In a world where abbreviations are cropping up all over the place (especially with younger generations), you might be wondering what these three letters mean. Well, the acronym stands for St. Anthony, Guide.

Calling on the patron saint of lost causes, St. Anthony of Padua, is a rather wise idea, especially in today's mail system where packages and letters often get mislaid.

The post further explains the tradition, drawing from a biography of St. Anthony written by F. Garzón: The story goes that this custom stems from 1729, when a wife tried several times to correspond with her merchant husband who'd traveled from Spain to Peru. Having received no reply to her letters, the anxious wife wrote a letter and placed it on a statue of St. Anthony in her local church.

After a few days and repeated prayer to the saint, she went to the church and found a letter addressed to her from her husband and a few coins.

The letter is actually kept at the Franciscan Monastery in Oviedo, and it is translated from Spanish as:

"My dearest wife. For some time I have been expecting a letter from you, and I have been greatly troubled and concerned at not hearing from you. But at last your letter has come, and given me joy. It was a Father of the Order of St. Francis who brought it to me. You complain that I have left your letters unanswered. I assure you that when I did not receive any from you I believed you must be dead, and so you may imagine my happiness at the arrival of your letter. I answer you now by the same religious Father, and send you three hundred golden crowns [coins], which should suffice for your support until my approaching return.

In the hope of soon being with you, I pray God for you, and I commend myself to my dear patron St. Anthony, and ardently desire that you may continue to send me tidings of yourself.
Your most affectionate,
Antonio Dante"

As a result, other Catholics turned to St. Anthony by adding S.A.G. to their letters, and from there the tradition grew. Later, the St. Anthony's Guild of Patterson, New Jersey (not NY as it says in the post), produced S.A.G. stamps like the one illustrated at the top of the article -- a very clever bit of marketing!

While we might be writing fewer letters than before perhaps it's a tradition still worth adopting for your occasional letters and packages. But we have a solution for those of you who tend to write countless emails. Why not turn to the future saint, Blessed Carlo Acutis, known for his skill with computers, and ask him for help with any emails you send?

Perhaps seek his intercession for them to reach the right person, or maybe for you to get the reply you want from your email. You could sign off your mails with your name and then a B.C.G. and then an S.C.G. underneath once his canonization process is complete!