Zechariah the Faster

Venerable Zechariah the Faster, also called Zechariah of the Caves, was a monk and faster of the Kiev Caves Lavra. Of his life only few and scattered reports are kept, at times in disagreement. He is commemorated on 28 August, on 24 March in the synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves (of Saint Theodosius) and on the second Sunday of Great Lent in the synaxis of all the Venerable Fathers of the Caves; the dates are Old Style.

On his time

Of his childhood and life as a layman almost nothing has been kept. The Russian biographical dictionary in the edition of Polovtsov, apparently relying on the Paterikon and on the Lives of the Saints of Dimitry of Rostov, places him in the eleventh century and says that his father, a Kievan named John, left the boy Zechariah in the care of another Kievan, Sergius, together with a large sum of money. When Zechariah reached fifteen and asked for his inheritance, Sergius said nothing had been left to him; the lie was, however, miraculously exposed, Sergius was punished, and Zechariah gave the whole inheritance to the Caves Monastery. More recent scholars have concluded that Zechariah the Faster and Zechariah, son of John, are not one and the same; the Orthodox Encyclopedia and other encyclopedias place the life of the venerable in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The years 1300 to 1400 in our record are only an estimate of the period.

His struggle

He entered monastic life at the Kiev Caves Monastery and until death struggled in strict fasting: he ate nothing baked or boiled, only a little greenery and that only after sunset. According to the surviving tradition, demons feared even his name, and he was granted visions of angels. His relics rest in the Far Caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra.