Venerable (Monastic) 4th century

Venerable Karion and his son Zachariah of Egypt

fourth century

Also known as Cyrion · Karion · Zachariah

Karion became a monk in Scetis, and his son Zachariah later joined him during a famine; both became known for monastic holiness.

Feast Day

December 5

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Commemorated as

Our Venerable Fathers Karion and his son Zachariah of Egypt

Life

Karion and his son Zachariah were monastics of Scetis in Egypt, commemorated together on December 5. By tradition Karion had been a married man with a wife and two children before withdrawing to the desert to become a monk. He is best known through the father-son pairing recorded in the Apophthegmata Patrum (the Sayings of the Desert Fathers), where both figures appear, and notices about them also survive in the Coptic Synaxary. They are remembered as representatives of the fourth-century Egyptian desert tradition, with Zachariah becoming the more prominent of the two in the sayings literature.

According to the accounts, a famine in Egypt led Karion's wife to bring their two children to him in the desert. The daughter returned with the mother, while the son Zachariah remained with his father and was raised at the skete, where everyone knew him to be Karion's son. As the boy grew older the brethren began to murmur about a father and son living together in the community, and the two withdrew to the Thebaid; the tradition relates that complaints followed them there as well.

To put an end to the murmuring, Zachariah is said to have gone to Lake Nitria and immersed himself in its foul water up to his nostrils for an hour, so that his face and body were covered with welts and he came to resemble a leper, scarcely recognizable even to his father. The sources present this episode as the turning point in his recognition as a holy ascetic. Both Karion and Zachariah are reckoned among the Venerable (monastic) saints of the Egyptian desert; Zachariah, who appears to have died young, was later sought out for counsel by other desert fathers.

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Sources and the Sayings Tradition

The fuller record of the two saints comes from the Greek Apophthegmata Patrum, where sayings are attributed to each. A saying assigned to Karion reflects on the difficulty of his situation: 'A monk who lives with a boy, falls, if he is not stable; but even if he is stable and does not fall, he still does not make progress.' The tradition also reports Karion's own admission that, although he undertook more physical labor than his son, he had not attained Zachariah's humility and silence.

Zachariah's sayings center on self-discipline and humility. Asked what makes a monk, he is reported to have answered that a monk is one 'who does violence to himself in everything,' content with bare necessities and nothing more. On another occasion he removed his monastic hood, placed it beneath his feet and trampled it, saying, 'The man who does not let himself be treated thus, cannot become a monk.'

Recognition and Death

After Zachariah's immersion in Lake Nitria, the synaxarion relates that when he next came to receive Holy Communion, the meaning of his act was revealed to Abba Isidore the Presbyter, who said, 'Last Sunday the boy Zachariah came and communicated like a man; now he has become like an angel.' Zachariah was afterward sought out for spiritual counsel by other desert fathers, including Abba Moses and Abba Poemen.

The sayings preserve an exchange in which Abba Moses, near his own death, asked Zachariah whether it was good to keep silence, and Zachariah answered, 'Yes, my son; be silent.' At Zachariah's own repose Abba Isidore was present and saw him look up toward heaven; Isidore is reported to have said, 'Rejoice and be glad, O my son Zachariah, for the gates of heaven have been opened.' Zachariah is said to have died young, near the end of the fourth century.

Notes

Named father-son pair kept as one row.

Sources: OCA Synaxarion (oca.org), Lives of the Saints