Karion and Zachariah of Egypt

Our Venerable Fathers Karion the Monk and his son Zachariah, of Egypt

Venerable

Karion and Zachariah were a father and son who lived as monks in the Egyptian desert of Scetis in the fourth century, and whose sayings are preserved in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the classic collection of the wisdom of the desert fathers. Karion, having left the world, was joined in the monastery by his young son Zachariah when famine drove the boy's mother to bring him there; raised among the ascetics from childhood, Zachariah grew to surpass his own father in humility and inward prayer. They are commemorated together on December 5.

Karion (called also Cyrion) was an Egyptian who, having been married and the father of two children, forsook the world and became a monk at Scetis, the great monastic settlement of the Nitrian desert, in the fourth century. When a famine struck Egypt, his wife, unable to provide for the children, brought them to the monastery and laid their poverty before him. Karion took his young son Zachariah to be raised with him in the desert — a boy could be reared among the monks — while the daughter remained with her mother.

Zachariah grew up in the wilderness and gave himself wholly to the ascetic life, attaining a depth of humility and stillness that, as the fathers themselves acknowledged, exceeded his father's. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve the striking admission of the elder: Abba Karion said that though he had laboured far more than his son Zachariah, he had not attained the boy's measure in humility and silence. Another saying tells how Zachariah, troubled by temptation and longing to subdue his flesh, went to the salt lake of nitre and stood in its waters until his body was disfigured with sores and he was scarcely recognisable — a severity by which he sought, in the manner of the desert, both to master the passions and to escape the esteem of others.

The tradition also remembers the manner of his death and his lifelong love of silence. When Zachariah lay dying, the great Abba Moses asked him what he saw; the young ascetic answered, "Is it not better to say nothing, Father?" — and Moses agreed, "Yes, my child, keep silence." At his repose the priest Isidore of Scetis declared that this young monk had entered into rest as one made pure. Zachariah died before his father, still in the vigour of his ascetic labours; Karion outlived him. Both are numbered among the venerable fathers of the Egyptian desert, and the Church keeps their memory together.

Feast and commemoration

Karion and his son Zachariah are commemorated on December 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil December 18), the memory falling within the Nativity Fast and on the eve of the feast of Nicholas of Myra (December 6). Their commemoration is universal in the Byzantine synaxaria, though as desert fathers known chiefly from the Apophthegmata they are without a proper festal service. Zachariah is also remembered on other days in some synaxaria; the joint commemoration of father and son on December 5 is the fixed one.

Iconography

As desert fathers of Scetis, Karion and Zachariah are depicted in the manner of the Egyptian ascetics — barefoot elders in the poor monastic habit, with long beards (Zachariah, though the younger, is shown as a grown monk), holding scrolls or with hands raised in prayer, sometimes together as father and son. No public-domain image of secure identity has yet been secured for this entry.