Zacharias of Scetis

Holy Venerable Zacharias of Scetis was an ascetic in the Egyptian desert of Scetis, a disciple of his father, Saint Carion, and a spiritual companion of Saint Moses the Ethiopian.

Carion lived in an Egyptian skete in the fourth century; in the world he had left a wife and two children. When famine came to Egypt, the wife brought the children to the skete and complained of poverty. The saint took the boy and gave the girl back to the mother. He raised Zacharias in the skete, and all knew that he was his son. When the boy grew up, the brethren began to murmur. Then father and son went to the Thebaid, but there too the monks were displeased. Zacharias went to a poisonous lake, plunged into the water up to his nostrils and stayed an hour; his face and body were covered with sores like those of a leper, so that even his father hardly recognized him. When Zacharias received communion, a revelation was given about him to the priest Isidore, who said: "Child, last Sunday you communed as a man, and now as an angel."

After his father's death, Zacharias labored together with Venerable Moses the Ethiopian (commemorated on 28 August). "What shall I do to be saved?" Moses asked him. Zacharias fell at his feet: "You ask me, Father?" Moses insisted: "Believe me, child Zacharias, I saw the Holy Spirit come down upon you, and that is why I asked." Then Zacharias took the cowl from his head, laid it at his feet and trampled it: "If a man is not trodden down like this, he cannot be a monk." At his death Moses asked: "What do you see, brother?" "Is it not better to be silent, Father?" answered Zacharias. "Yes, child, be silent," said Moses. When his soul was parting from his body, Saint Isidore, raising his eyes to heaven, said: "Rejoice, my child Zacharias, for the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven have been opened to you." Zacharias reposed at the end of the fourth century and was buried in the skete.

The saint is commemorated on 18 December, in the new style.