CARION

1. Abba Carion said, 'I have laboured much harder than my son Zacharias and yet I have not attained to his measure in humility and silence.'

2. There was a monk in Scetis called Abba Carion. He had two children which he left with his wife when he withdrew from the world. Later, there was a famine in Egypt, and his wife came to Scetis, destitute of everything, bringing the two little children (one was a boy, called Zacharias, the other was a girl). She waited in the marsh land, at a distance from the old man. (For there was a marsh beside Scetis, and they had built churches and wells there.) Now it was the custom in Scetis, that when a woman came to talk with a brother or with someone else whom she had to see, that they should sit far away from one another while they talked. So the woman said to Abba Carion, 'You have become a monk and now there is a famine; who is going to feed your children?' Abba Carion said to her, 'Send them to me.' The woman said to the children, 'Go to your father.' When they got close to their father, the little girl ran back to her mother but the boy stayed with his father. Then the old man said to his wife, 'That is good. Take the little girl and depart; I will look after the boy.' So he was brought up in Scetis and everyone knew that he was his son. As he grew older, they murmured in the fraternity about him. Hearing of it, Abba Carion said to his son, 'Zacharias, get up; we will go away from here, because the Fathers are murmuring.' The young man said to him, 'Abba, everyone here knows that I am your son, but if we go somewhere else, we can no longer say that I am your son.' But the old man said to him, 'Rise, let us go away from here.' So they went to the Thebaid. There they were given a cell and stayed there several days. But down there the same murmuring recurred about the child. Then his father said to him, 'Zacharias, get up, we will go to Scetis.' A few days after their arrival in Scetis once again they murmured about him. Then young Zacharias went to the lake which was full of nitre, undressed, went down to it and jumped in, up to the nose. He remained there many hours, as long as he could, until his body was changed and he

became like a leper. He came out, and put on his clothes again and went back to his father who scarcely recognized him. When he went to communion as usual, Abba Isidore, the priest of Scetis, had

a revelation of what he had done. When he saw him, he was filled with wonder. Then he said to him, 'Last Sunday the boy Zacharias came and communicated like a man; now he has become like an angel.'*

3. Abba Carion said, 'A monk who lives with a boy, falls, if he is not stable; but even if he is stable and does not fall, he still does not make progress.'