Abba Carion said, “I have done many more labors than my son Zacharias, yet I have not reached his measure in humility and silence.”
They said there was a monk in Scetis named Abba Carion. He had two children and left them with his wife when he withdrew. After some time famine came upon Egypt, and his wife, in distress, came to Scetis bringing both children with her, one boy named Zacharias and one girl. She sat at a distance from the elder in the marsh—for it was the custom in Scetis that when a woman came to speak with her brother or another man connected with her, they sat far from one another while speaking. She said to Abba Carion, “You have become a monk, and there is a famine. Who is going to feed your children?” Carion said, “Send them here to me.” She told the children, “Go to your father.” When they came toward him, the girl turned back to her mother, but the boy remained with his father. Carion said to his wife, “Good. Take the girl and go; I will keep the boy.” So he raised him in Scetis, everyone knowing that he was his son.
When Zacharias grew older, murmuring arose among the brothers because of him. Hearing this, Carion said, “Zacharias, get up; let us leave, because the Fathers are murmuring.” The boy said, “Abba, everyone here knows that I am your son. If we go somewhere else, they will not be able to say that I am your son.” The elder said, “Get up; let us leave.” They went to the Thebaid and, after receiving a cell, stayed there a few days, but the same murmuring arose there about the boy. His father then said, “Zacharias, get up; let us go back to Scetis.” A few days after they returned, murmuring arose again.
Then the boy Zacharias went to the natron lake, took off his clothes, went down into the water up to his nose, and remained there as long as he could. His body became so altered that he looked like a leper. When he came out, he put on his clothes and went back to his father, who scarcely recognized him. When Zacharias went to Holy Communion as usual, what he had done was revealed to Saint Isidore, the priest of Scetis. Seeing him and marveling, Isidore said, “Last Sunday Zacharias came and received Communion as a man; now he has become like an angel.”