Our Holy Fathers Karyon and Zachariah.

Commemorated December 5 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

Father and son, they were great Egyptian ascetics. Karion left his wife and their two children and went off to become a monk. The young Zachariah was taken into the monastery as a child, and outstripped in asceticism both his father and many other notable ascetics. When they asked Zachariah: 'Who is truly a monk?', he replied: 'He who constantly exercises himself in the fulfilling of God's commandments.'

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK